Lightning Rod

[But nothing worth doing is easy. A dream like this demands all of you. A dream like this demands you risk everything. A dream like this takes you down the the darkest pit of despair that you can possibly imagine and asks, "Are you ready to give up yet?" And when you say No, it it takes you down one level further. "How about now?"]
Coffee & Chocolate

Lord, I want to be lightning
streaking wild and crackling
across your open expanse of night
the stars above me watching
unable to outshine me
cold and uncaring
while I set fire
to the world.

And the pens are all here. The set of highlighters and colored Sharpies and the ballpoints with the special grippy dots and metallic pastels that you bought with rolled pennies three months ago and mailed them to me on the sly. The graph paper comp books are here. Four of them. Black, green, red, blue. The 1:4 ratio you love. The scent of another woman's perfume. The taste of coffee on my tongue. The beating of my heart.

The grandfather clock is ticking.

The rulers are here. Two lengths. The pencils are here. Purple erasers. My hands are on the table top, palms flat against the cool wood. There is bread in the oven. There are fat lilies floating in a bowl of scented water. My Bible is open. A deck of cards from the game I've built -- the game with the Fallen Angels and the quantum mechanics -- are fanned like a rainbow. There is a silver thumb ring resting in the white margin at the top of the page.

The grandfather clock is ticking.

I sit there for four hours. I straighten the rows of supplies. In the silence of the room (silence because no one else is here) all the little inanimate sounds become elaborate distractions and launch flights of fancy completely unrelated to any reality in or out of work. I sharpen a pencil. I click a ballpoint. I pop a Coke. I tell myself, "If you were here..." I tell myself, "What is the point?" I tell myself, "You are afraid to succeed."

You are afraid to try.

My housemate comes home. She has known of me for years but only known me half of one. She hangs her keys. I hear her smile because the bread is done and sitting out to cool. She unzip her jacket. Comments on the cold. I hear the snap of her clasp popping open as always. Her hair tumbling free. And then the sound of her heels on the hardwood floor.

"Eliza..."

Then there is true silence. It seems, as the wave of her anger rises, there is a moment when all sound -- even the inanimate sounds of the radiators and the clock and the house in the cold wind -- is swallowed. I am holding my breath and perhaps more than anything else I have ever wanted, perhaps more than anything else I have ever needed, I pray for her to yell at me.

She doesn't.

Her heels. The sound of them. Her slacks. The swift brush. Her sharp, short intake of breath as she steps up behind me and sees the table... exactly... *exactly* as she left it... eight and a half hours ago.

As if on cue, the clock chimes 2:00. In the morning.

I look up at her. I want the lecture. I want the indignant speech. I want the confusion, betrayal, hurt. I want the litany that will rain down on me like stones and batter me back into the warrior I know I am. I want to be dragged, kicking and screaming, back to the table of the last supper and be forced to eat, to drink, to listen.

I look up at her. I turn my face up like a child. But I am not a child. The failure of a child is a learning experience. The failure of an adult is poor planning, laziness, sickness, no excuse and no lesson learned. Failure enables more failure. Until finally, even small successes don't feel like victories any more. Failure casts a very large shadow.

Her face is hidden from me. Her hair is beautiful and dark and full. It falls in waves like chocolate. She has been on her feet, literally, all day long. The "break" she got eight and a half hours ago wasn't anything more than her racing in to pick up a change of clothes and a different PDA, another set of keys, and three ounces of peach yogurt. She could be thinking that I escaped stress and doubt by watching tv or playing BioShock or even falling asleep on the couch in front of the fire. She could be hating me. She could be forgiving me. She could be thinking about the stack of bills -- all opened and dated and categorized by payment plan and due date -- and how I have never touched one of them. Maybe she's thinking I am weak. Maybe she's thinking I am fragile. Maybe she's just so consumed with jealously that she's been working all day and I've had the balls (or lack thereof) to sit here, at her table, doing *nothing*....

"Get out."

Her voice might be conversational. It is neither loud nor soft. It is simply strong.

She walks from the room. There is a new sound. A blue vase I adore (but which is not mine) shatters. I can't see her but I know she's picked it up by the mouth and slammed it against the cream stucco wall. With the pottery there is the sound of coins across the hallway floor. The household piggy bank is empty now.

She come back into the room and throws a wad of cash into my lap. There is maybe four hundred dollars. I stare down at it. This was toward the month's mortgage. I had contributed maybe one tenth of it.

"Get out."

She turns and leaves again. I see a mane of hair as I catch a glimpse of her face. It is as though she is carved from stone.

I stand. I stare at the door way into the house. I dare not collect my things. I can't think to do anything else but turn away and go to the door. I don't need to get my keys. I trashed my bike almost a month ago driving way too fast when it was way to dark and all I knew was rain and that hard, cold jerk of some hand yanking me off my baby before she went over the rail and I went under.

My hand on the knob. I can't say if I'm afraid. I can't tell you if this is rock bottom. I feel nothing. I am past numb. I am somewhere on this side of done. Somewhere on that side of terrified. I look back at the table.

She is standing there. Her fist is clenched over my open notebook with the blank page. My ring is gone. Her eyes burn like I have never seen eyes burn. She dares me silently to speak.

She lifts her chin. Her jaw twitches. Her breath is broken for a moment and then, "Come back when you grow up."

And she stares at me hard... until I turn and leave. Because there is nothing to say. There is no excuse. There are no words.

But everything more she could have said and everything I want to sob, flooded me over and over again in waves all the way down the coastline, all the way across the border. Words unspoken and embraces not given, haunted me for three days and three nights and filled my body with so much truth I had no room for food and forced myself to sleep only when I could no longer see.

I made my confessions:

The fearless one is afraid.
The resourceful one is out of ideas.
The inspired one is unmoved.

There would be no resolutions. There would be no second chance. This was the first offense. It was hell. A second failure would not be so bloodless.

When I returned, the posters on the wall were gone replaced with a white board, markers and eraser. With a yard stick she had graphed it all out in permanent marker. I had a new desk. It faced a window. A new laptop. It faced the room. There were cards on the wall -- Alpha and Beta Deck -- slipped into protective sheets and tacked in order. There was a color-coded schedule of chores, of work, of project tasks, all broken out with little flags and arrows and instructions and slide time and firm lines. It was posted in the hall where the vase had once been.

I heard her step up behind me. I smelled her perfume. One hand on my hip as she leaned against me, her cheek to my shoulder.

I covered her hand with my own. I reached back without looking and touched a lock of her hair. I looked at the schedule, the meticulous hours of work. "I like," I told her. "'Dinner out with Sunshine' on Saturday nights."

"Only if every prior task is marked complete," she told me, and she reached past me with her free hand and tapped the small white boxes next to every colored task.

I nodded quietly, unable to speak, the warmth of her so obvious after being so absent. Her fingers traced the lines of days, the open spaces of slide time that would surely fill with contingencies and shifting hours. She stopped when she reached the empty bars that represented this hour, this moment, now. I blinked. "What should we do?" I asked very quietly, my voice almost a whisper beneath the pounding of my blood in my ears.

Her voice against my shoulder, "I think we should pray."

Lord, I need to be grounded
fighting hard and impassioned
through all these burning days
your dawn above me watching
doing everything to lift me
the ones you send help me
to find the truth right here
my faith, my lightning rod.

Stressed is Just Desserts Spelled Backwards

“We try a new drug, a new combination
of drugs, and suddenly
I fall into my life again

like a vole picked up by a storm
then dropped three valleys
and two mountains away from home."

Since thirty-four *million* Americans will be told they suffer from depression at some point in their lives, we *all* know or are someone who has dealt with this mood, mind and life altering state. However, that means absolutely nothing to that much, much smaller number of Americans who fight, daily, hourly, heartbeat to heartbeat, with the physical, chemical imbalance of clinical depression. This is not that thing that grips you after Bobbi Sue leaves you at the alter (even though, dude, that did suck). This isn't even that terror, helplessness, immobilization that happened after your third baby when postpartum hit you like a hurricane and you thought that Brooke Shields was the only voice of reason in the world (and you were probably right, grrl). This is every day. This is like demon possession or a contorted stranger who rides around on your back, maybe letting you have one or two or ten "good days" before you haul off and slap your son or tell your wife she's useless and fat. This is the stuff that robs hard-working, brilliant artists from being able to create. This is the hardcore sniper who takes out the most articulate word warrior and leave her speechless when she most needs to fight.

This is depression you can't pray away.

Or... can you?

I am not, by many definitions, a Jesus Freak. And yet that's exactly what I was called today by a very near and dear friend. We were just talking and she said, as an aside, "I know you think you can just pray anything away, little Jesus Freak that you are, grrl..." and then she ate a jelly donut.

I blinked. I cocked my head. I took the last bite of her donut and said, "I don't believe that, actually." But by the time I got home, I decided that I do.

"I know you're out there.
I can feel you now.
I know that you're afraid.
You're afraid of change.
I don't know the future.
I didn't come here to tell you
how this is going to end.
I came here to tell you
how it's going to begin.
I'm going to show you a you
not ruled by this thing.
A you without without
borders or boundaries.
A you who makes anything
and everything possible."

The bigger the problem the harder it is to fix. Um, yeah. That makes logical sense. And yet billions of dollars a year are spent by people trying to do the hard thing (no, it isn't easy... shoving your face full of garbage food is easy) of losing major weight by some easy method. And, stunner of all stunners, it doesn't work. Like my jelly donut friend likes to say: Epic fail.

What's more, we all have different *God-given* abilities. Strengths and weaknesses that are different, unique from one another. What we have seen is easy for one person might be colossally difficult for us. But who are we to question the divinity and reasoning of God? Yeah, I don't think so. Kinda like a ten-step plan with fewer steps, let's just:

1. Accept life is hard.
2. Accept life is struggle.
3. Accept life is worth it.

I've been told before that my attitude (encompassed in these three points) is way too "willing martyr" or even far too "accepting of the unacceptable" for most everyday Americans. I'm sorry. I wasn't aware that many of my fellow Americans were so delusional. I don't feel like either a martyr or at all accepting of the unacceptable. I simply believe, with all my heart, that if life were easy, if the physical, chemical framework of our bodies were simple, we'd all be running around singing "Man in the Mirror" and making that change. But life is actually all about the complexities that make us made in His image and not made in the image of tapeworms.

Another adage kept coming into my mind on the drive home. That hiking saying: Walk lightly. Carry what you need and leave nothing behind.

Of course, that is not a good adage for life. It would actually be a really, really crummy life philosophy. But often, someone who suffers from major or "explosive" depression, feels like they are stomping through life leaving behind them a path of destruction and damaged that cannot be undone. These individuals are damaging themselves as they crash through the thickets and brambles of life, and they are damaging every loved one traveling with them. Because, far more often than not, these individuals are not alone, but rather surrounded by partners, husbands, wives, and children. Everyone is hurt. And no one is left the same.

I think the best approach would be to add a step to our not-quite-ten-step list:

4. Leave the moment better than it was.

Stop and think about that. Now, you might say, with depression, wouldn't it just be enough to leave the moment? Or leave your family? Or shut up, tune out, plead the Fifth? Um, yeah, if you want depression to win. I know that sounded simplistic but what I mean is: For every moment that you just try to stay quiet and get by, not engage, you are thinking of nothing but your depression. Your entire focus is on that. But what if, instead of wallowing, drowning in your own chemical bloodbath of doubt and despair, you made it your personal freaking mission to make every time you walked into a room actually *better* for someone else?

You step into the room and kiss your baby.
You step into a room and hand someone a cookie from the jar.
You step into the room and tell a joke (not a sarcastic or biting one).
You step into a room and hand a love note to someone you love.

You start to leave positive marks on your landscape. You leave behind the best of who you are. Even if depression has stolen your tongue and you can't find the words, you will not be without a voice. A good friend of mine has a sock drawer full of colored papered hearts. Every day she puts one in her coat pocket. When her depression spins out of control and drags her down, she gives the hearts that have gathered in her pocket to the people around her. Because they've stayed. They've stayed even though, sometimes, she's hurting them as badly as the depression hurts her. She just walks into the room and leave behind her hearts. Instead of screaming or fighting or throwing a vase, she leaves behind hearts. Her seventeen year old daughter told me, "I have a treasure chest. It's handmade and sits in the corner of my room. In it I have a shard of glass from my graduation photo that Mom threw across the kitchen once when she was raging. I also have three hundred and seventy-eight paper hearts. That piece of glass always reminds me how ugly she can be when she gets low. But I don't see it very often buried beneath all those paper hearts."

5.Pray constantly.

Ah, the Jesus Freak is in the house. I mean, could just as well say, "Sing constantly" or "Talk constantly." but I thin "Pray constantly." just has a certain freaky perfect to it, don't you? Let;s practice:

"Lord, I'm about to see Joss. He will say something with double-meaning. He will act like he owns me. It isn't my imagination. It isn't depression. Others have substantiated my feelings about him. He will be an ass. Help me smile at him, speak clearly and say only what is needed, not engage, and think of naked mole rats and how his wanker must look just like one."

You think that's too irreverent? Guess your Christ and my Christ aren't the same one. Go ahead and click to another website. Come back when you actually bring someone to God instead of terrify them into submission.

Let's keep praying:

"Lord, I'm feeling scared and low. I'm going into a stressful place filled with stressful people. Give me the strength to just wade into that stress and tell the really funny joke about the priest, the hamster, and the IMVU credit."

"Christ, allow me to swing my daughter into my arms and make her whole evening."

"Christ, it's me again. I just want to cry. Let's listen to music instead and then watch 'Glee' on Hulu."

"God, the chemicals surging through me are like a cancer. They eat away at me. Wearing me down to nothing, to worse than nothing, to a cancer in the lives of the people who love me. Because God? They have proven their love. Because they are still here. It would be the easy thing for them to go. But they stay because I fight to stay, too. Fight with me, God. Help me lift them up even as you lift me."

The moment, the second, the heartbeat you lift someone else, you will be lifted. The moment you reach out, you will be touched. No, not because turnabout is fair play, or because you're keeping tabs, or expect anything in return. But rather because thinking about something other than yourself and your situation and your own spinning wheels to nowhere, will *free* you to sing.

So maybe we should rewrite our steps. Maybe they should just become:

Accept it.
Face it.
Pray about it.
Rejoice in it.
Live it.

What's it? Life.

Or maybe the paper hearts line the path and the approach is only:

Love

"I looked at the sky
and remembered that
you’re always there.
Reminding me that all
I really have to do
is breathe."

For you are already loved in return.

EJ

Alex shares.

Krizia shares.

Praying in 140 Characters

I found it's possible, when it rains like this, to remember the face of Christ without being a fanatic or insane. Though sometimes I'm both.

How can intelligent people vomit ignorant bigotry all over their children? The whispered answer is simple: I overestimate their intelligence

Christ in raindrops, in pixels, in metalwork. My Lord in words, not scripture, but backbeats. Holy Spirit in speed, the wind, dark freeways.

I must call you my community because our bedroom politics are the same? You are raising your child blind to God. How can you possibly see me?

So hard to be the moral ruling class. Zipping up the chasm between church and State the way they zip up the body bags of all their gay kids.

Hypocrites are not only two-faced to their enemies. They barter in lies, make trades with stolen trust. Not a fortune cookie. Your mother.

Finding inspiration in salty sea spray, fresh sweet rain, and the cold brilliant night that is just between my Christ and me and all of you.

Dawn arrives without trumpets. Even arrives on time. Every songbird had faith. Every flower turned her face in anticipation. Suspended there

Christ is unchanged, always changing. Rain falling down glass, the waves of the sea, the clouds in the sky. Gamer grrls change too. S(t)weet

It amazes me how much can be said (and left unsaid most artfully) with only 140 characters. And certainly Christ doesn't care whether you spend forty hours a day on your knees or fifteen seconds praising His name. After all, He's got billions of us already. He's not really looking for quantity. He's looking for meat. And amazingly, that sustenance can be found in ever fewer than 140 characters. It can be found in:

Please help me.

I trust you.

Walk with me.

I love you.

Like the child who asked his grandfather, "I only know one prayer. Do you think that's enough?" The grandfather answered, "Christ doesn't hear the words, child, He only hears your voice."

Spreading the word in every medium, because every gamer grrl knows the value of good exposure,
EJ

Fifty-five Words

I never intended to be reborn
as someone other than
the grrl I’ve always been.

If I ever walked on water
it was only to reach you.

It was always more about
self-preservation than
self-sacrifice. (I wasn’t
coded to be a martyr
this time around.)

Yes, I pushed you.

And you let go
and jumped.

Your Great Big Ruler

I watch you measuring me up. In your three-piece and your shiny shoes. Your glasses make your eyes look small and rat-like. You twitch your nose in distaste at my ACT UP tee and only intensify the rodentia impression. I am only numbers to you -- some too little, some too big. I am a collection of converse and concave angles, curves and lines. I am BOP and Q Score. I watch your eyes scan me, taking in as much information as is packed into a barcode. Yeah, you don't just think you have my number, you think you have my price.

But I don't even know my price.

I'm laying in your arms and I know you're somewhere else. Got some other browser window open in your brain. Your breathing, I know it so well, and it's not right. You're only pretending to me asleep. As my breath fills the hollows of your back, your hair black satin in the night, I cannot see your face but I imagine that your eyes are open. You are thinking about...

"What are you thinking?"

She always wanted to know. It was the only time I saw real fear on her face. Not fight, just fear. I think she really expected that one day I'd say, "Not of you." And because I knew that's what she thought, every response of any sincerity choked me and stuck half way up my throat. I couldn't get the truth past that lump. I couldn't shake the feeling that somehow, even if I was solving world hunger while she went down on me, or composing sonnets about the way her hands lifted my hips, her wedding ring catching on the satin sheet, even if I confessed to all of that, she'd know I was lying. She'd see in my eyes I was thinking of... nothing.

You were my oblivion.

Going cold-turkey sucked.

So here I am and you're sizing me up and dressing me down with eyes as judgmental as hers never were, and you're already undressing me so you can attach all the labels that you can fit because of my nipple rings and my Christian tats and my d6 pendant and my ankh ear cuff. You have made every decision about me that you will ever make and it stuns me that you don't think I believe in God. I don't just believe in God. I have living proof that He exists and looks out for me. Because if He didn't, than two hours ago, when you first stepped into my trailer, when you first straightened your tie and began to talk, when you first measured my worth with you great big (probably three inch) ruler, when you first did all that... well... if there wasn't a God?

If God hadn't been looking out for me, I would have leaned forward in the first thirty seconds and told you that your wife tastes like honey and nutmeg, and your side of the bed has a great view of the ocean.

(And I would have lost my job.)

God rocks.

One Patch of Earth, One Grain of Sand

“The temptation of Christ refers to the trails of Jesus by the devil as detailed in the Synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke. According to these texts, after being baptized by his cousin John, Jesus fasted for forty days and forty nights in the desert. During this time, the devil appeared to Jesus and tempted him to demonstrate his supernatural powers as proof of his divinity, each temptation being refused by Jesus with a quote of scripture. The Gospels state that having failed, the devil departed and angels came and brought nourishment to Jesus.

“Mark's account is very brief, merely noting the aforementioned events, but giving no details about them, not even how many there were. Matthew and Luke on the other hand, describe the temptations by recounting the details of the conversations between Jesus and the devil. Since the elements of the narrative that are in Matthew and Luke but not in Mark are mostly pairs of quotations, rather than detailed narrative, many scholars believe that these extra details originate in the Q Document.”

It is just a patch of Earth. There has been no stone rolled away here. There has been no murder. Likewise there has been no rousing call to arms preached from this spot. No child conceived on a warm spring day, picnic blanket spread here beneath the surrounding privacy of the trees. It is just a patch of Earth. That is how some see it. And that is truth. Not *the* truth. *A* truth.

Just like I highly doubt that those forty days of fasting were the first or last time that Christ was tempted.

I’ve written before about the glass being half-empty, or half-full, or, as I like to see it, all the way full -- water and air working as one to fill every empty space. But our individual perspective doesn’t begin or end with glasses of water. We are constantly, each of us, living in our own reality. Our own OS. My Reality, version 1.5.

Why the version? Because sometimes we are shaken by quakes of realization or enlightenment that our reality shifts. Not reality itself. *Our* reality. But still that is monumentous because *our* reality is the only reality we have.

Matthew 4:1
Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil.

I am standing in the dead of winter staring any where but at the patch of dirt. Because, you know, it’s dirt so why would I look at it? I am entranced by the sky and the feather brush of the evergreens as they stroke the low clouds. But my friend is staring down. Staring at the dirt.

“In summertime, bronze and orange irises sprout here. They push up from that spot right there and their stems, their stalks are thick and strong. The colors are almost masculine. They look metal. Steampunk even. I can’t look at this patch of dirt and not see them. I feel an ache... and anticipation for them here--” he touches his chest. “I know this is their place of slumber. Sacred. They’re waiting... and I’m waiting with them.”

I look at the ground. The grass is pale and weak. The soil is dun and dull. It is not lush and loamy. It is not dark and pungent. It is actually what you think of when I say the word dirt. It is nondescript. Littered with small pebbles, leaf remnants, bits of twigs and pine needles. It’s just... dirt.

“You see the potential of what this patch could be, will be,” I offer, trying to mesh our realities because human nature drives me to do so.

My friend, who is also my father, shakes his head, “No. I see what it is. Now then forever.”

Mark 1:12
And immediately the spirit drove Him into the wilderness.

I slip the photographed out of my grandmothers New Testament. It has as many blank pages filled with hand-written scripture as it has printed pages. The cover is blood red leather, almost black. The pages are like sheets of rice papers. The photograph is borrowed... stolen... treasured.

Here is that patch of dirt. Just that dirt as it was years before my father and I ever stood and stared at it and not. There is actually no dirt to be seen in this picture. No ground at all. The space is over-flowing with dense clusters of forest green leaves studded with brilliant robin egg blue gumdrop shaped flowers. Tiny petals are visible if I stare hard enough.

My eyes are drawn to the dark-skinned woman in the picture. She is kneeling by the tiny gemstones of blue, one hand reaching out not to touch them but as if to feel their color and vibrancy in the air like heat or vibration. It is obvious that she sees something I do not. My eyes are on her. The lines of her body that are as familiar as my own. Her posture and unspoken language that says so much without words. My eyes are not on the dirt. They are not even on the flowers and leaves and colors. I see only the person and everything my mother is telling me about herself, about myself, about that one patch of dirt.

Luke 4:1
And Jesus, being full of the Holy Ghost, returned from Jordan, and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness.

That one space is unable to grow a tree, we learned. Though no one could establish why. It is unable to grow roses of any variety and sedge grass loves it. It receives mid-day an late-afternoon sun but some morning sun as well though the shadows of transition still rest there at dawn.

A person could choose to ignore the space. The study it for hours and days. To write a book about it. To photograph it. To explore it. To turn it. To cement over it. You could nurture it or burn it. Replant or experiment. Wire a street lamp. Lay a patio. The choices for that patch of dirt -- for any and every patch of dirt (or moment, or sentence, or praise, or insult, or strike, or dream) -- are endless and countless, different in all of our realities. What is a temple for me may be invisible to you. Your joy may look like my slavery.

We can never change our reality to another’s. We are simply not made that way. The closest we come is to stop ourselves and lift from our own lives for a moment. To ask ourselves, “How must that feel?” and truly and thoroughly slide into another’s shoes. I think very few people can do this well. I think many don’t take the time to learn how.

After all, even if you can understand or glimpse another person’s reality in perfect detail, impossibly unbiased by our own, it still does not change your own world. You will still have your reality and they will have theirs. The best we can hope for is that, by changing places, by considering the insular realities of others, we might some day come upon that divine moment of realization and enlightenment. That moment when our own reality shifts up a version and finds itself renewed.

Matthew, Mark, and Luke seem to think that Christ’s forty days was something extraordinary for Him. A great Temptation. A poetic and dramatic event that surely served as enlightenment. A unique and power set of trails.

Yet, interestingly, the story of the temptation is one of the notable omissions from the gospel of John the Beloved. Perhaps John, arguably nearest and dearest to Christ, knew that He would suffer so much more, that in other instances (perhaps ones not noted in the written scripture) Christ had faced much worse. Maybe what Matthew, Mark, and Luke saw as a great temptation, was just yet another bout with that same old satan, that same force of malice that dogged Him every where He spoke.

Maybe John knew that Christ would see the temptations as something else. As just a patch of dirt, an expanse of sand in the desert. Just one temptation, one trail among countless others in the life of our Lord.

EJ

Impulse Control

There are certain words that get overused (actually, there are a *lot* of words that get overused -- like "lite" and "free" and “forever”) and used incorrectly and so they begin to lose their meaning, lose their power, and this worries me.

No. Wait. It doesn't worry me. It infuriates me.

Let's talk about these words. Let's actually talk about them as they were conceived, not as they have been conveniently co-opted by lazy thinkers who have nothing better than to approach life as gluttons for momentary pleasure, living so much in the hererightnow that their lack of reflection on what might come after (if anything) doesn’t bother them in the least because, not unlike trans fat, if heaven and hell exist, if reward and consequence are real, than we’ll only know for sure when it’s too late.

What? You'd like to know what these words are, specifically, before investing in the time to scroll down, read (skim), engage (or not) on this topic with a grrl you've likely never met or will meet but who seems to think that actions don't always speak louder than blogs? (Because why else would I? Blog, that is.) Of course, that is another conversation and not the one for today, so I’ll give in and give it up... but just this once, and just because you’re special.

Addiction. Empowerment. Sin.

Still with me? Most of you, I think no. Right about “addiction” is when the zoning out began and right about “empower” is when tiny minds who think I mean men when I say man are rolling their eyes skyward in chagrin in the face of the touchy-feely wonder of it all. Then we hit “sin” and I peak a little interest in the apparent paradox offer, the contrast/compare of gamer and grrl, but quash a bunch more interest because, heck, hererightnow who needs to worry about sin and since when did I start believing in sin anyhow? Like everyone in the whole wide English speaking world knowing the name Stephen Hawking or Albert Einstein but only half those knowing who they are and only a tenth of those having ever actually read anything written or composed by either of them.

Now that there are only four or six of us left reading, let’s jump in. Because if I can’t live an examined life, than I’m just wallowing in slop and the last time I looked in the mirrored wall of my favorite dance club I was a taut and sexy thang, not no swine, baby. So let’s go play with pearls.

Addiction is a buzz word. It is hollow cheeks and dark circles and blood shot eyes. It is ultra skinny nothing but bones, covered in bruises, dirty and raw. It is destructive. It is illogical. It is not what anyone wants. It is a call, a pull, an inanimate thing that gets what *it* wants, without thought to host, to effect, to consequence.

I’m sure you can imagine the posters now. The faces. The taglines. The stark colors. You know the substances. The behaviors. The guilt, pain, sorrow, disappointment.

But what if I want to look deeper. What if I want to say: Addiction is an ache that cannot be filled until fed its desire. A constant yearning. A distraction. Elation beyond reason when satisfied. Defying logic to rejoice in consummation.

What if I defined addiction as: That which drives us beyond reason, to the edge sanity and logic, to the utter destruction of everything we were before and everything we could be with it. To yearn, to weep, to ache, to reach. To desire more than breath. To be willing to pay any price, any time, over and over again.

The pearl of great price. The wisdom of His stand: Do not as you have done. Change everything. Change everyone. Change yourself.

His words were more radical than email to carrier pigeon. His actions were more radical than covered wagon to space shuttle. I can code prayers in binary into the backgrounds of the newsletter I publish and that’s still tame compared to turn the other cheek, judge not your fellow man, and ask me for forgiveness... for anything, for everything... and it is yours.

Speak to me, from your lips to my ears, and I will hear even the unspoken that hides in the shadows and folds of your heart.

I will hear you. And what is more... I will understand.

“I fall to my knees
when I hear my angel’s voice.
Oh night divine, this night
when this love was born.”

It is addiction if it hurts someone else. Whether it’s drug-use, hatred, anger, compulsion, sex. It is impassioned if it drives us closer to God... when as it drives us mad.

Empowerment is a raised fist, a rousing speech, a grant, a trust, a parade, a law. Empowerment is pride in the lift of a chin, the direct line of a gaze. It is hoping and dreaming and building pillars beneath every castle in the air.

Empowerment is so close to enabling that the line is draw in dry sand. The winds of popular opinion shift and suddenly the division is gone and so are our good intentions.

I sit in a basement room with checkerboard lino and a cool comfort that encourages talk and chipped, second-hand mugs of hot cocoa and cheap tea, drip coffee that somehow emerges from the keg-shaped tank at the end of a green folding table. The bargain table cookies are gone and the crumbled napkins and crumbs are abandoned and forgotten. It will be my job to clean up the mess.

For a generation, this new generation, after Gen X, sometimes called Gen Y, the words have been shouted: Be proud! Stand up! Stand Out! FTW! (Forget the World.) Embrace the moment. And the statistics that had fallen are rising again. The rousing cry of, “Don’t let them beat you down!” became a growl of, “Nothing can take me down!” and there is no truth in that that isn’t misguided and twisted.

And every time you take him back in, you enable him to keep drinking and smoking pot.

And every time she weeps sorry and you murmur itsallright, you enable her to keep killing you.

And every time you let him fight alone, you enable him to be a rock, an island, an untouchable thing.

Every time you offer best wishes instead of time, every time you let confessions of hurt hang in the air, every time you flood her inbox and her ears with hypocrisy, you are enabling the very behaviors you pray would cease.

We empower because there is a darkness that must be risen above. But all that black still exists, swirling in eddies, maelstroms. We need to educate, not empower. We need to illuminate and examine, not empower.

We need to face the midnight storms, stand within the event horizons, and shatter them, disperse them, destroy them. It is easy to lift up. It is harder to dig down. But solid foundations are always stronger than pillars.

It really seems a sin to ignore the problem and throw bouquets of empowerment. Whether or not the soldiers are empowered, the darkness will still eventually kill them.

Sin is everything you have been taught it to be. Some of us have been taught the same actions, thoughts, behaviors. Others have never even heard of them. It floored me to hear that one doctrine claims masturbation will keep you out of heaven but resisting could eventually make you deity, when just down the street and around the corner, another congregation was teaching humility and out-right martyrdom to its youth, with masturbation as a way to rid yourself of sexual urges and desires and keep your body pure toward others.

Perhaps “sin” cannot be so easily defined? Unless “sin” is a convention of man (by which I mean humans, mankind, not everyone with a penis) and so is concocted by the ruling class, the rule-making, the money-holders, the power players. Is it a sin to step on an ant on accident? How about on purpose? Is it a sin to let a child cry unattended? How about to slap your wife? How about to cheat on your husband? What if you just *think* about slapping your wife when she accidentally looks at another man’s butt? Oh, how tangled a definition of sin we weave when we practice to deceive.

Who is drafting the definition of sin? Certainly not God. Deception is not in the genetic makeup of our Lord or when they told Him, “Dude, just *say* you’re not the son of God, and we’ll get you out of here, ‘kay?” and yet there He stayed. Bleeding. Dying.

But man and deception goes all the way back to Eden:

“Did you eat the fruit?”
“Oh no, no, no!”
“Than why are you buck naked?”
“Cuz we got shy!”
“Who told you to be shy?”
“The armadillos!”

The art of war and survival (not to mention those holy scripts) tells us we need to be fruitful. Just makes sense that anything that doesn’t make babies should be a sin. Common sense! (Oops! Guess none of the prophets foresaw gross overpopulation! Dang it!) The very same arts -- war and survival -- say safety in numbers, safety in homogeny. So suddenly conversion makes sense... holy wars... terror and bombs and ourgodistheoneandonly mantras that are justified even as we vilify each other.

Who decides what is sin?

God decides.

But the masses cry, “What about *until* God intervenes?! What about *before* we slip our mortal coils? What about others who sin and them needing to be punished? What about a prophet or helper or preacher or someone to facilitate the recognition and ramifications of sin and sinners *now*?”

You know what I say to all that? I say, “What a bunch of impatient, self-important, greedy, voyeuristic frakkers.” That’s what I say.

Sin is when Christ whispers into your heart and you pretend not to hear Him.

Sin is when He lights your path but you find it too rocky to walk.

Sin is when you damage or destroy that which is precious to Him.

Sin is hubris, jealousy, hatred, possession. Destruction, disregard, disrespect.

Sin is not dictated from the pulpit. It is a knowledge in ourselves, placed there by His hand, and it is as unique as our finger prints, sewn to fit our soul alone. Where cowardice may be the sin of one man, fury might be the sin of another. Only Christ and our hearts know the truth.

And that is why no man can judge another.

There is power in words. Great hurts can be healed or hidden by simple phrases. So when I see t-shirts with slogans (therein lies a delight) that shout for action instead of words, I pause and muse on longevity and remembrance, on meaning and definition. I think about all the actions -- of addiction, of empowerment, of sin -- that make us all who we are, that make our world what it is, ad I can’t help but wish that a few of us (a few hundred thousand of us) would sit down and stop taking action for a moment.

Just sit down, reflect, shut up... and blog.

EJ

Suspicion

"You start walking your way
and I'll start walking mine.
We'll meet in the middle..."

"Too right for left, too left for right.
You can't get me, I can't get you.
From my spot on the fence
what a wonderful view."

I do this sometimes. Well, I do a lot of things sometimes. Not a very stable grrl, I suppose. But I can't remember ever reading about an artist who was stable. Most of them are down-right nuts and nuggets, as a matter of fact *shrug* I suppose I'm doing all right.

"Walk on down to the corner grocery store.
Bought myself some groceries and a little bit more.
Now I'm flying, flying higher than a kite.
And I'm doing all right, doing all right."

There is a stranger and you all know how I never learned not to talk to strangers. I figure that ever stranger is just an experience I haven't had yet. And as a gamer grrl I gotta get that EXP or I'll never level up, baby. I mean, What's your story? Right? This is Hollywood. Land of Dreams. Everybody gots a story.

So I'm slumming it because I've been working for twenty-three days straight and they've been those killer ten and twelve hour days and it's just shy of midnight and I look like slop. I'm in jeans all torn up and combat boots I bought off the back of a truck that have claw marks from some cat (I hope) along one side and a new-to-me ratty-ole brown leather jacket with Airforce patches and... oh yeah... that's about it.

'Cept, you know, my cross.

Now sometimes I don't wear one. I mean, I have ink. My shoulder. So I'm always wearing one. But sometimes I do stumble on my own belly button lint and I start to spinning about that whole concentric circle game of we're-gonna-be-different-because-we've-so-enlightened, "Why the cross?! What an icky symbol! Why celebrate His death?" And so I wear my Ichthys. You know. The little Christian fish symbol. But tonight I just so happen to be wearing my cross.

And my lefthand thumb ring.

And my left back-pocket purple bandanna.

And my attitude. And your cologne. (Not that I put it on... per say.)

So when I smile (way) up at the stranger in line before me at the corner store -- me a great big cornucopia of patches and symbols and code words and statements -- I'm not really surprised when he starts in. I was only surprised that he wasted no time.

"How do you know who you are?" He motions me up and down (mostly down because dude is like a big brickhouse and I'm his pool boy... or the tool shed).

I tilt my head and shrug a bit. "Cuz my Bible tells me so?"

He smiles, showing perfect LA teeth. I wonder, Do I know him? He says, "Society tells you who you are. The media."

My grin deepens. "I am the media, baby."

He laughs and he has a nice laugh and I look down and he steps outta line and I follow him. he leans against a concrete pillar next to the ice cream freezer and I notice he wears a wedding ring and the numbers tattooed across his knuckles might be scripture or they might be California penal code. Hard to tell. His skin is a two shades darker than mine, as chocolate as mine is cinnamon.

"You aren't suspicious?" He's looking down my half-zipped jacket. Not much to write home about ('cept the wearing no shirt part) but I know he's looking at my cross. "You're all covered in tags."

Oh, hon. If you only knew.

"It takes too much energy to be suspicious," I answer and my sincerity is so obvious in my voice it startles me a little. I guess... you know... I have something to say about suspicions. "I gotta look at it like this: If I work my skinny butt off to prove all my suspicions, I'll do it. Every one. I'll find liars and cheats and people who hate me who I thought were my friends. I'll find money exchanging hands in the parking lot of every church and blood in the confessionals and bribes on the offering plate. I'll find good people where I don't want to find them and bad people holding me tight when I cry. I think I'd rather spend my energy doing something else. Doing something... for Him. Not for me."

The stranger looks at me. The clock on the wall behind him says that, according to man's time, it's the Sabbath. Saturday and turned to Sunday by the power of man's great big black-on-white numbers. The power of the tick tock. It doesn't feel like the Sabbath to me until the horizon is painted with color. Or... does it?

"Do I make you suspicious?" What on Earth made me blurt that I don't know. Maybe not on Earth at all but rather in Heaven.

He smiles at me, the glib response ready to tumble on my deserving head but then he stops. He holds out his hand. We shake, just one pump, then hold, nothing wrong, mutual understanding. His hand is the length of my forearm.

"If I asked you, what should I do today, what would you say?" He means Sunday morning. What should he do Sunday morning.

"Ask me."

His smile widens. He even shakes his head in amusement. I don't wait for him to ask again.

"Stay home," I tell him as I realize our eyes are almost exactly the same color. "Stay home and make love with your lady and laugh with your kids. Go walking alone. Go walking with them. Plant something. Pray aloud together. Pray aloud alone. Realize that every congregation you need already hold dominion in your heart, in your home. You. Your family. God. The rest..." I look away. I shake my own head. I drop his hand and smile back at him. "The rest, man, is all suspicious."

And I turn and get back in line to pay for my gum, my Coke, and a pack of Beef Jerky.

I'll take my communion without the smoke, without the mirrors, without the closed curtains, pre-determined ballots, political pay-offs, and absolutely without the media.

The church of my heart is like my favorite dance clubs. Media Free.

EJ

403. Every person who, without authority of law, willfully disturbs or breaks up any assembly or meeting that is not unlawful in its character (only in its spirit), other than an assembly or meeting is guilty of a misdemeanor.

404. Any use of force, disturbing the public peace, or any threat to use force, if accompanied by immediate power of execution, by two or more persons acting together, and without authority of law, is a riot.

405. (a) Every person who with the intent to cause a riot does an act or engages in conduct that urges a riot, or urges others to commit acts of force and power, or the burning or destroying of lies, and at a time and place and under circumstances that produce a clear and present and immediate danger of acts of force, is guilty of incitement to riot.... (b) The existence of any fact that would bring a person under this definition of subversion shall be alleged in the complaint, information, or indictment and either admitted by the defendant in open court, or found to be true by the jury trying the issue of guilt, by the court where guilt is established by a plea of guilty or nolo contendere, or by trial by the court sitting without a jury.

406. Every person who participates in any riot is punishable by a fine not exceeding one thousand dollars, or by imprisonment in a county jail not exceeding one year, or by both such fine and imprisonment.

407. The taking by means of a riot of any person from the lawful custody of any peace officer or lawful institution which confines any person is considered a lynching.

408. Every person who participates in any lynching is punishable by imprisonment in the state prison for two, three or four years.

409. Whenever two or more persons, assembled and acting together, make any attempt or advance toward the commission of an act which would be a riot if actually committed, such assembly is a rout.

410. Whenever two or more persons assemble together to do an unlawful act, or do a lawful act in a forceful, boisterous, or tumultuous manner, such assembly is an unlawful assembly.

Yeah... well... nolo contendere, baby. Nolo contendere.

Relevance

010001100110111101110010001000000100011101101111011001000010000001110011011011110010000001101100011011110111011001100101011001000010000001110100011010000110010100100000011101110110111101110010011011000110010000100000011101000110100001100001011101000010000001001000011001010010000001100111011000010111011001100101001000000100100001101001011100110010000001101111011011100110110001111001001000000110001001100101011001110110111101110100011101000110010101101110001000000111001101101111011011100010111000100000010000100110010101101100011011110111011001100101011001000010000000110011

[I am sitting in the sunshine, pale and sweet with autumn, in the public park in town. I am reading from my Bible and lost in thoughts private between me and my God. A woman comes suddenly to stand so close I see her feet first... and then the feet of her little children. "And if you bigots won't let me marry my partner, their other mother, the only family they have or know, what will happen to my children when I die?!" And she does not wait for a response. She is so angry. There is no time. There is no time because the effects of chemotherapy are obvious and universal. You come up behind me and only then do I realize I am standing. You saw and heard it all. You wrap your arms around me from behind. You whisper, "She doesn't know. She didn't see." But I look down at my Bible and I respond, "She saw enough." And I start to cry.]

I find the people I want around me are the ones who write a good press release. Better yet, the ones who can take a book, song, product, movie and boil it down into two sentences of why and if it's relevant.

Relevant. That means it means something. To us. Now. That means it reaches us, touches us, finds and discover us. And the "it" doesn't have to be inanimate. It can be he, she, them, even us.

Are we relevant?

I felt lost and alone. Oh, look. I'm unstable. I asked, "When you are struggling, when you're ill and hurting, is this... all of this... even relevant?"

You were silent for a long time. The distance between us clicked and hummed on the phone lines. I imagined I could count the beat of your pulse. "I'm sorry," you said, your voice low and smooth. "When did salvation become irrelevant?"

The partner you always wanted is right there.

And there. And there.

Have you ever done something, dreamed some dream (you know, a Dream), and thought it was big, it was wide, it would teach and preach and reach and touch, find and discover and no one, no one at all, would ever resistant it, ever close their hearts to it, because it was right (you know, Right)? Have you ever felt that feeling? Maybe even seen the proof in the pudding and in the reality of the reason for believing.

But you can't change a heart. You can cause a heart to open or close. You can coax or condemn a heart. But what it is, who it is, at its core, it will remain, now then forever. The scripture of the heart, wisemen like to say, is written in blood and muscle long before we are grown men. The scripture of the heart is what we have come to believe -- not the words we have memorized or the parts we have played -- but the truth behind it all. Arrogant, self-important, doomed, dreamer, useless, soldier -- the core truth is there, imprinted if not by the hand of God, than by the acts and reactions of our parents, our peers, our reality, our nonreality. The truth remains, lingering, whispering, carrying on into immortality, even after our bones (and heart) are less than dust.

I have witnessed and known -- blessed to know -- fighters who have risen from darkness and struggle and hopelessness. They are bright and they blaze trails for others to follow (or fall behind if they can't keep up). But even there, deep inside these burning hearts, there are whispers from the seed they grew from.

No. I am not saying "once poor, always poor." No. I am not saying we cannot change our station or that our lives are pre-written and we can't break away from cycles of abusive, of nature, of nurture. I am saying simply: The whispers will always be there.

So... I'll surround myself -- arm myself! -- with seeds who are:

Humble in speech
Proud by right
Relentless in desire
Driven by faith
Strong in community
Brazen in spirit
Unshaken by adversity
Deserving of respect

"No one *deserves* my respect," she told the group of teens. "They earn my respect." She looked at them each, slowly. It took time. Everyone waited their turn. "My parents. My teachers. My peers. Any and every authority. All of you. My loyalty is legendary. If you earn my respect." (Gee... think she grew up on the streets? What does her heart seed whisper?)

Earning respect. I would think, to do so, you'd have to be pretty dang relevant. You'd have to be active and push. Not passive and pull. You'd have to be a fighter. You have to read the signs.

"Push Communication is where the offer of information is initiated by the speaker. It is contrasted with Pull Communication, where the request of information is initiated by the listener."

They cannot read the signs. Because the trappings of comfortable religion (which have never fit the amorphous, limitless possibilities of faith) are just that, traps. The lightning is not Zeus. The rain is not tears. But neither is science the devil. Neither is desire the enemy.

They are lonely and lost. They are arrogant and meek. They stumble and ask questions that those who have trampled before us cannot answer. They are seeing in nature what is killed inside their churches. They are looking for truth before the faith in them dies.

"There is tranquility in ignorance, but servitude is its partner."

The New Hampshire license plate once read (still does?): Live Free or Die

Who am I serving? Who are you serving?

"You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today." --Abraham Lincoln

The whispers in my heart are wild, untamed. They turn tables. They do not waver. If I drift from the path, they call me back. If I look to the sky, they bring me dawn.

"Give us your poor, your tired, your huddled masses longing to be free..." The ones you don't want anymore, the one who are beginning to want something and it isn't you, we will take them in. And we won't all get along. And we won't all look alike. And we won't all agree. But welcome is what happens when people listen. Welcome is what happens when people speak. Community is what happens when you earn each other's respect. Christ is just a natural consequence of all that truth.

Mark Twain said once, "Principles have no real force except when one is well-fed." Especially when the diet is hollow but convincing. Tasty and neat. No clean up afterwards. Drop your tithe in the plate and continue on. The country songs croon, "Here's a twenty for last night, and another for what I'll do tonight." Now ain't that American?

Rally forces and step in time. One person made a difference, you know His name, but now He asks us to repeat His cycle. He turned the tables, turned everything upside down. No more original sin. No more sacrifices. No more anything but a direct line to Him. Times have changed. They had changed then. The old ways fall away. They were crumbling then. To be a real Christian is not to hate. It is not to oppress. It is not to deny certain inalienable rights.

It is to bring change. It is to rise up and embrace thy neighbor.

Those of us who have broken free of denomination's pasture to find the Shepherd have one journey and one alone:

To keep Christianity relevant.

EJ

Surfacing

No matter what you say about life
I learn every time I bleed.
That truth is not a stranger to me.

I admit that I'm wrong
and then I change my mind.
I realize nothing is broken.

No need to worry about everything I've done.
Live every second like it was my last one.
This is my path and I walk it.

You tell me, it's not you, it's me.
And, baby, I would have to agree.

The radio is playing, running off batteries the way my bossman ran off at the mouth today, keeping us four hours long on no extra pay to give us notes (you know, Notes) on performances phoned-in by walk-ons who weren't even there. I'm told I'm supposed to be joyful that I have work at all. And I do have it. Work. Lots of it. Work. But not sure where the money goes after rent and food and utilities. Seems like there's never enough left for anything more. Not gas, not 'net, not a movie out. Seems like we're drowning in all this work... with nothing floating on the surface.

But I take a deep breath of the cold city air and I am thankful. God bless America, I am more thankful than I can find words to express as I exhale a free woman with access to free press and a heart that loves who she pleases and how. I am aware and awake to the truth that what I take from my job is less stress than the world hands some of my friends -- where rent or food or utilities are not paid. Where kind words cease to be helpful at all if they aren't accompanied with cold, hard cash to buy shoes and winter jackets at Goodwill.

The day, my day, falls away to the pavement and I walk the last two blocks home. I stood on that street corner for half an hour coming to terms with the fact that I was so far from drowning I was laying in the sun, on the sand, drink in hand, compared to some of those I love.

No sooner do I arrive home that you take off. Take your jacket. Take your keys. You're gone. I sink down on the couch, tug at yesterday's paper. I watch you leave. I hear the lock snap. Your face, just a glimpse, was tight, angry, your teeth bared while you breathed through parted lips. I close my eyes. I think it was only for a moment.

When I open then again, you are standing in the threshold. The only light is behind you, indirect and diffuse. You are cast in shadows heavier than night. You are holding a rose, deep red, long-stemmed. You stand there forever.

A drowning man doesn't worry about pride. A drowning man will fling out a hand to any soul, friend or enemy. A drowning man who believes... who Believes in himself, in his own worth, in his own place, in his own value on the face of a world of billions, will fight fiercely until no breath remains, until oblivion swallows him whole.

He does not fight only when it is easy. He does not fight just until it gets hard. He does not fight only when there is a chance. He fights even in the maw of the lions. He fights when there is no reason or logic or peace from fighting.

Christ did not suffer... for hours... pain and humiliation, degeneration and betrayal... just so we can give up on His ticket. Just so we can step off His watch. Lay it down. Hand it over. "Let go, let God." doesn't mean give up. It means: Open up! He doesn't have a queue. He's not backed up, baby. You scream, when you bob to the surface, "Lord! Lift me up! Lord! Fill me with your fight!" And He does. He just... does.

Because that's what a Christian is. A live wire. An open conduit for Christ.

I am not understanding the reason why the Far Right pounded their chests whenever liberals (dear Lord, what does that even mean any more?!) "disrespected" the president. And yet... every right-bent blog I visit, opens with, "Hey, *I* didn't vote for him..." or "I'm conservative. That means I didn't vote for Obama." Oh. Okay. Hi! *waving* Hi there, *minority.* Hi there, loser! Hi there, person calling attention to the fact that you don't agree with most of your own country. United we stand, people. Before you blog, "Obama just won the Nobel Peace Prize for doing nothing." How about you try typing, "Obama just won the Nobel Peace Prize for proving to a world of 6,485,614,626 non-Americans that if they just wait four years, the heavy-handed, bigoted, Republican, double-dealing, intolerant white men will, by and large, be cast aside by the free thinkers who understand what the words 'freedom of religion' and 'division of church and state' mean and elect a new president... one that might *finally* be a decent man... instead of a creature owned by the institution of lies that is Man's Church." (MLA or APA Citations for these statements have been removed to encourage readers to GO READ history themselves... and perhaps the Bible, too.)

I am surfacing. I rise from the couch.

The drowning man does not have time for oratory. The drowning man does not have time for clever twists of words, barbed and stinging. The dying *man* does not strike out in his last, but rather fights on with it. It is only the dying *beast* (so close, sadly, to some men that one is the same and indistinguishable) that strikes out even as it falls. Where is the victory in pity, in pain, in energy and heartbeats spent toward two defeats?

I was nine. I was angry. In the way that only children can get angry. My mother tired to reason with me. I mother never reasoned well. She called, throwing up her hands, to my father. He lowered his paper slowly. He tipped his head and looked at me.

"You think this is righteous anger, Eliza?"
"I do, Papa."
"You think it brings glory to God?"
I am silent. He is not:
"You are the scorpion in the desert drowning in quick sand. With your last strength you strike and kill the owl. If instead you had wrapped your tail around his foot, he would have lifted you from the sand."

The thing that haunted me, stayed with me, for years afterwards, is that my father, gentle, conservative, traditional, joyful, open-minded, intellectual, had given me the blue prints for life. With that one fable -- a flash fable, like flash fiction -- he had left enough unsaid that I could carry on as pacifist or fighter. I could move forward in silence or with shrewd retort.

I learned:

To let a bigot talk himself out... and then use his own grandiose flight against him.
To find my footing, and then strike.
To call for help, and value help, but still know forever who my enemies are.
To struggle. Always. Until I get it right.
To see my attackers for what they are: A chance to stretch, to reach, to grow.
To trust that God will always send the owl.

And that the owl will try to eat me.

And that sometimes I will have to sting the owl when we are still in flight.

But falling through a sky of Christ's own stars is the best kind of drowning I can imagine.

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.

It is not morbid or emo to admit, to announce, to confess and to confer that we are all drowning men. In sadness, in regret, in anger, in inaction. We are all drowning in some small or large way because we are not perfect, we are not divine, we are men, we are human, we are mortal. We can wash ourselves with thankfulness that we are not another man, who no longer can break the glassy surface of the stormy sea, but thankfulness alone doesn't buoy us for long. We can stop the weeds of wallowing self-pity from tugging us down, but eventually, even thankfulness will fail if we are surrounded by other drowning men.

But what happens if instead of dying together, we cross the fathoms and give to each other everything we have? Do we drown faster? If we are all struggling together, if we all unify to struggle toward one goal -- to host an art show, to hold an open mic, to launch a book... a shuttle... a dream -- aren't our chances for survival a thousand times magnified? Aren't we stronger in numbers, as a community, as a people?

Abraham Lincoln, before his election, said to a prominent preacher, a man who could bring about or bring down Lincoln's nomination to the party, "I will join a church when they ask me to subscribe not to man's word, but to the words of Christ: To love one's neighbor as oneself. To see all men as equal in the eyes of the Lord."

Standing before you, the scent of roses from one rose, the ceiling disappears and I am beneath a billion stars. I could stand here forever, tracing angel constellations, wishing that someone would defend me.

But I would rather stand here and shout, sing, pray. And defend someone else.

Just think if we all saved a drowning man today, how clear the sea would look tomorrow.

EJ

Think It Through

The simplest solution is often the best solution. Think of the almost incomprehensible number of creatures and objects and rules of physics that God had to craft with creation. Try to grasp that and you’ll see quickly what logical sense it made that He wove everything – everything! – from fractals that repeat and flip and turn and slide into place. Genesis made simple... only for God, of course, but you get my idea.

In teen out-reach (“RL Bible Study”) tonight one teen asked me point blank, “Why did God make sex feel good?”

An older grrl across the circle muttered, “It does?”

But I gave in. I played along. “You’re really asking, why did God make sex feel good if we have to wait until we’re married... or until we’re trying to conceive?”

The teen flipped her hair and shook her head, popping her gum and adjusting the belt on her jeans. “No. Not *that* kind of sex. The other kind.”

And my sharp retort of pleased/amused laughter rang off the church basement floor. I looked up at my co-teacher with great big eyes full up of joyful opportunity. He looked back at me with klaxons of alarm sounding. Oh... I looked away. Right. As Christians... we’re not supposed to *like* our bodies.

*shrug*

Too bad. I do.

And so I said:

I stood on the beach with the waves around my bare feet and cresting around my calves and she was running, laughing, her hair wet with the spray, leaving a trail of clothes behind her until she threw herself into my arms, tackling me into the waves and locking our mouths, our hips, our hearts... and it all felt so good. Why? Because I was alive. And she was alive. And we had the entire ocean to discover and each other.

And it was all a gift from God.

I danced hard in the darkness and the strobes were blue green red. The beat was heavy, unrelenting, power and sex (same thing), pleasure and passion (ditto) shaking me down and turning my marrow molten bronze and my skin into rose petals. I felt free from every care, every worry, every Suit telling me what to do, how to walk, who to kiss, how to live. I was me: Endurance. Beat. Strength. Firm, slick with sweat, wild with the night. And nobody was taking me home but me. I belonged to only me.

And it was all a gift from God.

The desert was like nothing I had ever seen. And we made love in the cool blue shade of ancient stones. His tongue traced the lines of my tats and the warm metal of every piercing and I felt my body like scripture, telling truths and stories unfiltered by politics or fear. All the fighting, all the sacrifice, all the compromise and standing ground was all right there to be tasted, to be read like Braille. My hands on his shoulders then tangled in his hair, I shouted at the endless sky.

And it was all a gift from God.

Holding you while you cried hard because he could no longer meet your eyes....

Holding my father while he passed from this world....

Holding my breath the first time you looked at me....

Holding on even when the world tells me to let go.

The only letting go I ever do is to let go, let God.

And that, too, is a gift.

“I hope that answers your question,” I say with a steady gaze and a gentle smile.

She squints her eyes at me than swivels in her plastic chair and fixes her youth pastor with an incredulous stare. “Where'd you find this chick?!”

There is laughter. Mine included. And I meet your eyes across the room.

When we are given a gift, we are thankful. We are gracious. We are respectful. When we are given a gift, a gift grant to us by our Lord and woven into our bodies in a hundred million fractal parts, we should not be ashamed. We should not second guess.

We must celebrate.

EJ

God Whispers: Down. Stay. Good Grrl.

...or The Importance of Inaction

I am sitting alone with you (is that an oxymoron?) above the sea. I used to ride out here, the speed easing me half way to the healing that the sea would complete, and then sit on the bluff at the side of the road. But that isn't how you roll. You have a little... a lot... more class than I do. You are elegant and refined, cultured and measured. I think this is why you have had so many lovers. I don't think many creatures like you exist any more. Especially not in GenX.

You whisper: I don't want my angel on the side of the road.

I like it when you call me your angel.

"No playing games.
You're watching me.
All those simple things you do.
They draw me in."

And so I am alone (with you) perched on the balcony railing of a five star hotel, the sea crashing three storeys below me. My bare feet dangling to the drop, my back to your chest, your hands slipping forward to open eight buttons. I find myself counting them come undone... as I come undone... all in time with the waves cresting, crashing, cascading, creating a new shoreline with every slip, slide, seduction of you. Your fingertips brush my hem, open cloth like you open by heart. Thumbs stroke down abs recently tightened for work. I shudder. They continue down then alight, with no other fingers, on my heavy Kawasaki belt buckle.

You whisper: I'm listening.

I like it when you're listening.

"The places you touch
you mark with a kiss.
No one knows your secret
but sometimes you let me in."

I try to open my mouth but my lungs fill with sea spray and salt. Suddenly I want the sand at my back, you above me, those freezing cold curtains of mist and wave washing up and away around us. I want you inside me, filling me up in a way that only the Holy Spirit can. I want to *do.* Not talk about doing. I want *action.* Not planning. I want to shut up and take you against me. I want to scream your name like the time the neighbors came knocking to make sure we were okay. I don't want to talk. I want to do. You open my belt. I'm waiting, you tell me, without words. I push against you but you won't be persuaded. I stare at the sea and imagine drowning sweet and wild in you. Come on, grrl, you're coaxing, tracing the lines of my muscles and bones. Then, roughly, without pretense, you turn me into your arms. Kiss me hard. I feel my hands let go of the railing and I'm flailing, trying to find a purchase in your clothes, your hair, your... but you are holding me so tightly that I do not need to hold on. And anyway, I've already fallen. Oh God, you know how hard I've fallen for you.

You whisper: You will talk to me.

I like it when you insist.

"I can't wait to begin.
I can't breathe while I wait."

I tell you everything. Everything. Everything that no one else knows. Everything that I never admitted to even myself. The fears, the dreams, the hopes, the broken heart. I tell you everything. I even tell you the truth. My own quiet truth, soft and tender. And so much of what I say starts and ends with, "They said..." and "...they say." So much of my reality shaped by how other people see me -- and the labels of culture, tradition, society, religion and politics that they glue all over me. Five times... I see your eyes counting... ten times... I watch your smile keeping track... twelve times is the charm and you stop me. Your finger tips against my lips is like an electric shock crackling through my body. You are fire and ice and I want you so much it's almost unbearable. I moan. You step away, leaving me in the plush hotel room chair.

You step back... but not too far. I can still smell your perfume. You unzip your bomber jacket and it falls over your shoulders as you shrug it back. It slides down your arms and back and pools, chocolate-and-nutmeg brown, at your boots. You hold my gaze. You tilt your chin. Your hands travel your body. You shudder. I lean forward in my chair, tensing. You hold up one hand, one finger poised. You shake your head with a faint smile. I lean back. I will stay. I will do anything you command.

You whisper: Are you watching?

I like watching you.

"Every time that I look
you're more inviting."

Shirt... button by button. Skirt... button and zipper. Boots... the arch of your back, the rise of your ass, as you bend over, the swell of each breast threatening to do exactly what you do for them a moment later. You are standing in nothing but a tasteful swatch of black silk and purple lace. Now you raise your hand again. But this time, you beckon me forward. I come obediently, willingly. You have never before allowed me... you have never beckoned me to you with this look on your face, so open, so honest, so obvious what you are saying. But then, you say it.

You whisper: Touch me.

I like...

Words and music fail me. I never thought you would say those two words. Never. I do as told. Gently, shuddering myself now. Slowly, unwilling to rush this moment so rare and precious. I explore and discover your hidden places, your secrets tucked beneath your waves of hair, aside the curve of your ribs, the taut rise of your shoulder blade. I take my time because in dreams (which surely this is) you can take all the time in the world. I am certain there are more than twenty-four hours in this day to touch you. We are the same height exactly so when I run my hands down your sides, cradle your hips and lean into your nape, your lips nestle against my ear.

You whisper: ...

And my eyes fly wide with surprise and pleasure. I cannot stop the gasp that escapes me. I cannot breathe, think, speak. I simply hear your two-word command and sink to my knees.

The sun sets. The balcony doors have remained open and I hear the waves even as I taste your heartbeat and feel my own pounding in my blush. Your hands tight in my hair, some minutes... hours? ...later, and then you ask the question: *They* say what you had wasn't real. *They* say it wasn't valid with only words. You have lived with me for months. I have taken your body countless times. And now you have taken mine. So, tell me, little angel: Which one of us do you know better, him or me?

I blink. I blink again.

You know who I know best.

Sometimes the truth can only be found in inaction. Sometimes action does nothing to show us the way. Sometimes it changes nothing. Sometimes all we need is the ability to be still and listen.

EJ

Give Me Five (Days)

If I whisper it, if I gasp it, if I murmur and coax with words and touch, will you walk with me and me alone, not now then forever, but more than just this night, will you stand at my side, will you be my beloved, for just five days. Will you give me all of you, will you trust and support me, will you try me on for size, will you hear my yes and hand me yours, will you guide my heart, my body and my life... for just five days?

A friend of mine said powerfully once, "I do not believe what the pulpit tells me. The pulpit is made of wood. If my church ceased to preach what I believe inside myself than I would cease to be a Baptist." She refused to be a label. She was stating, simply, that should her church change their mind tomorrow -- receive divinity retold -- she would walk away to worship one-on-one, just her, just Christ, just the truth. A new holy trinity.

Denomination is broken. Oh? Are you clicking away, closing the browser, muttering to yourself, "Here she goes again!" But here I go again is exactly where I'm going:

Mob mentality. If enough people, or the "right" people say it, repeat it, phrase it or shape it, we believe it. Not our logical mind. Not our heart. Not the voice of God in our own ears. We are egotistical, I suppose, if we have the strength, the confidence to say: I understand that you believe that, mother (father, pastor), but that is not what I believe."

Because in order to say that -- loudly, proudly -- we must know what we believe and know who we are. We must be, if not doubt free (though the strongest people I know are) than on the path to that shining destination.

How can you know that I am not the one who will love and cherish you, fight for you and hold you? How can you know when you will not look at me, look in the mirror, look into the surface of the baptismal pool and see our faces, side by side, every Sunday? You have seen me awash with desire for you. You have seen me fight with words and fists for you. But you resist, you insist, you desist any activity that might allow you to glimpse me as more than just a creature passing through your life when you need it. To you I am first a miracle and second transitory, short-lived. You leave me notes that thank me for reports and charts and chocolate chip cookies and unspoken, unexplained evenings of passion, and you compare me to falling stars, comets, bright, brilliant, burning away.

And Christ says just the same. Why are you mine only on Sundays? Why am I yours only when ministry fills your ears? Why won't you carry me with you always? Why don't you hear me when I urge you, "Kiss him..." Why do you allow secular doubt to fill the sacred, holy places I made hollow only so you could fill yourself with me?

Does doubt help you? Decide. Move. Looking back doesn't teach any lesson. If you must look back for the lesson, it wasn't yours to learn.

Does fret buoy you? Or does it sink you into mire and muck and shadowlands of twisted paths cobbled with more of the above (doubt)? Throw out fret because it kills you and kills your light, and reach out for faith.

Does that sound overly simple? Do you crease your brow and cry, "How?"

Just try it. Replace every single act or thought of doubt or fret with action. With decision and with faith. That means doing the work. Going the extra step. Do it for five minutes. Than five hours. Then, finally, five days. When you doubt, decide. Sometimes you will be wrong. But do it anyway. When you fret, turn to faith. Turn to the light, to the sky, to a child's embrace, to a friend's laughter, to a favorite verse in poetry, in song, in scripture. Instead of leaving your place of worry filled with dread and inaction, go forward from your place of light. Open yourself up to inspiration... and then leap.

Leap right in.

Five days. Be mine. Look at me and see that I will love you forever. That my promises are absolute. That my mind is my own, but my heart is already yours. For five days look at me... and see yourself in my eyes. You will know everything inside me if you only take the time to see. Just five days. In the eyes of our Lord. Just five days.

It will change your life.

EJ

Difference of Opinion

There is so much about you that means so much to me. The song says it, doesn't it? There isn't anything about you that doesn't do something for me. I'm not interested in fifteen minutes of fame, but you were my closest brush with divinity... and that's saying something. I have witnessed divinity standing in my kitchen. I have heard divinity in rain song. I have read divinity in ancient texts all but lost, all but censored and burned. But you were divinity in sensation, in heartbeat, in fingerprints left on my skin that I can never forget. Of all that we have shared, all the moments, all the crossroads and catalysts, fears and flashpoints, all the inspiration, discovery, and victory, everything we have held between us, sacred and alive, the hours I hold most reverent are the hours when there was nothing between us at all.

But you do not agree.

The hours you hold most holy is the long evening into night, twelve hours, maybe fourteen, when there was a polished cherry wood table, twenty d6, four number two pencils, a hole-punch and one graph paper notebook between us.

That difference in opinion has only stopped bothering me in the last two hundred and fifty-six days. But it was today, at first light, when I realized that acceptance was wrapped in a golden hallelujah.

“I look into your eyes
as you are saying goodbye
and I see for the first time
what I see for the last time
all the scars that I laid
all the price that you paid
but I swear I never saw it
until now...”

The sunlight is oppressive outside the arboretum greenhouse. Somewhere above and outside the thirty foot ceiling, the sharp blue sky is cloudless with summer heat. Perched forbidden in the tropical crook of a hardy, split trunk palm, I feel my spine and the tree become one thing, two separate entities blending seamlessly into one, and I close my eyes and muse on the vast variety of human experience... the myriad of ways the exact same event can be seen, felt, lived by a myriad of people.

I remember...

You undress slowly, by candlelight. You have dressed carefully, in perfect layers of emotion, only hours before, before we went to dinner. You stay just out of arm's reach. You will not allow my touch only my gaze and it will stay that way all night. My mind is drifting. That happens sometimes. You say it fascinates you that I'm always thinking something. I finally murmur to you as you lift silk over your head, “How do you feel right now? Be honest.” You smile at me. Honest is the only way you know how to be. “Powerful. In control. Pleased with myself,” you tell me, impressing me once again with your pure sense of self. “How do you feel?” you ask, not surprisingly. I smile back at you. “Powerless. Without control...” my smile changes. “Pleased with you.”

The smells of the flowers – sweet, elusive -- and the green, rare growing things – spicy, lingering, thick -- that fill this glass palace wash over me not unlike the sea spray at the oceanside. I hear children laughing and the low, comfortable voices of a man and woman. They are discussing the behavior of an older child, a teenager, who is not with them but is clearly their own. The way she's dressing is the topic of conversation. Mother says, “It's empowering.” Father says, “She looks like a whore.”

I remember...

Making a checklist of attributes my perfect partner would be required to have. It was an exercise more for myself than for anyone else (so said Cosmo) so that my mind was clear. You met my every desire – physical as well as behavioral – except for one. It seemed small. Maybe even something that could have changed, and I was so willing to overlook it. Not be too picky. Because you had a child. I would be walking into a ready-made family. A little family that needed my support – financially and spiritually and emotionally. It was like walking into a dream come true. And I was a dream-walker, deliriously happy even when I was huddled, crying, shaking, afraid, humiliated... telling myself over and over again that this was everything I wanted. The first and last time we had a friend over for dinner, she threw back her chair when you ridiculed my attempt to pray in your home, and she snarled with bared teeth, “I have never witnessed such abject cruelty.” But I had been so sure I was happy... so happy... perfectly happy.

Here I am. Sitting here now. There was perhaps twenty people in the massive greenhouse. Some walk the paths alone. Others are together. But either way, they each experience this place in their own way, on their own terms.

We want so badly to not be alone, to connect, to find those bonds that bind. And we believe so deeply, so fundamentally that to fit together we must have more common denominators than uncommon ones. We must share opinions, politics, skin color, religion, and more and more.

But what is interesting (what is *fascinating*) than if another is exactly as you are? Where is the wonder and discovery and spark of new possibilities and broader horizons then?

No where. If we surround ourselves with what is easy to get along with, with those who are so like us they almost cease to be individuals outside us, than there are only the possibilities that exist when we are alone. Our view of the horizon (of everything) is narrow.

Humanity can survive with an insular, isolationist approach, but it cannot grow. It cannot evolve and transform. Do we really want to stay *here*? Is this really as high as we think we can reach? God did not place us here, on this only green world, to wallow in petty, base animal instincts – eat, sleep, screw, fight. We are animals, yes, of course. We mirror nature just as our world mythologies mirror themselves and ourselves crossing all political borders. But we are the animal that God named steward of all others and the Earth itself. Connecting with one another beyond the primal needs for food, shelter and reproduction and is what God expects, demands and requires of us.

I tucked my hands behind my head. I imagine that no one will find me here ever. That I can exist indefinitely perched here in this cultivated garden of Eden. I imagine the faces of my comrades. Those men and women who are walking with me on a path I once walked alone. They are all... so different. Even those who, on the surface (their armor perhaps) appear so like me, experience life so very, very differently. Intrinsically different. We are not one race, religion, orientation, generation, political party. We do not all call each friends, call each other reliable, call each other at all. But we are together. We are, as a team, standing, fighting, working, all to create something beautiful, something with depth and breath and beating heart. Our differing experiences, even with the same event, the same facts, the same words and moments, combine and spill into our ideas forming a singular experience that becomes greater than any of us could create alone.

I am talking, of course, about Mardi Gras 3000.

This blog has become a place for me to bare my heart and talk to my friends, strangers searching, other fighters hoping. But I have to stop and remind myself that this blog would not be here if it weren't for MG3K. If it weren't for the encouragement, the focus, the support, I have found in that community. That community of dynamically different people.

There are people in my life – forces in my life – outside that network of comrades, who are trying their hardest to tear me down. Some say they love me. Some say they hate me. Some just insist I need them. They say: Look to your own. Look to those like you. Look to us. But they don't understand or know me. They herald the end times (little end times) because their own experience is failure. Their shared experiences are focused on their own losses and so that is all they have to project, to offer. They are little minds that surround themselves with little minds and they cannot understand that we celebrate that we are each different, with and without blame in every situation, above and beyond and beneath the work we must do, choose to do, avoid doing. We are realists and we dance in the face of our own imperfections.

“There is no way you'll make it. And when you fail, when you flame out in false glory, you'll come back to me because I know how to treat you.”

No, I won't.

And no, you don't.

But don't take my world on it. Because that's only my experience.

Just keep watching us reach.

EJ

So Sayth the Lord

Mass is over but I do not rise to leave. I sit for long moments while the crowded pews empty leaving me, eyes closed, in contemplation. This is not my denomination. I am not a joiner, a team-player, a follower... except of Christ... but we made a deal: You would go if it was alien to me, too.

The sounds of Sunday catch up and gossip and small talk take a long time to melt away until finally there is just this:

The sound of a place made holy by human faith.
The sound of stillness.
The beating of my heart.
The beating of your own.

If stain glass windows and rose oil on wood and impossibly high and arched ceilings had a sound, there would be that sound as well but I will have to settle for the sound of candles flickering at the stations of the cross. The whispers of saints and shuffle of prayers floating among the rafters.

You speak into my quiet space:

"Once, when I was younger, I had every hope and every faith in everyone and everything and every where I saw God. I knew with certainty that if I prayed and married and lived my life as He commands, that I would arrive at my Destination which shares the same root as Destiny. Not heaven. Something before heaven. A place I could touch and taste while still my body was flesh and my tongue hungered. This place was called Happiness."

I open my eyes. They, my eyes, are brown and black and gold. They are the same hues as the worn wood of the pew, the leather of the hymnal, the gold of my father's wedding ring that I have come to wear. I stare at one of my hands, gripping the edge of the pew. My brown knuckles are white but still the pew seems insubstantial. I am falling through space... or maybe rising. It is impossible to tell until... unless... I arrive.

You continue:

"It did not happen gradually. It happened all at once. Not at dawn as revelation is rumored to come, but at the soft fall of darkling. I was not alone -- the city street was crowded -- nor was I introspective. But I may as well have been on a mountain top deep in faithful meditation. The truth was like sharp, cold rain, pure and undeniable: All my life had been shaped by other hands. Not God's hands but man's. Culture and society and expectation. I had never once struck out on my own for wilds unknown with myself and my God alone to guide and comfort me. Never had I allowed Him to be my only companion so that He could show me, in running river and still pond, in morning dew and misty sky, a reflection that showed me myself as He sees me. Not once had I come near that place called Happiness... because that place is not a destination but rather the journey to heaven itself and it is the journey that is the location. It is the journey that is Happiness."

I raise my bowed head. I look to my right. You are there, composed and proud. Today you attended service in a black knee length skirt with a gold link belt and a purple silk blouse. Your buckle-up boots are intact with their angel charm dangling. You blink once, slowly. You are looking past me. You have not spoken since before Mass.

I turn almost against my will. I look to my left. The woman who sits beside me was not there during the service. She is not looking at me. Her profile is austere, regal, dignified. She turns to me so suddenly that I jump.

"Do not stray from your location."

And she is gone. Moving soundlessly away through the aisle. Moving gracefully out of the church and into the day.

I stare after her.

You lay a hand on mine. I do not look at you. You ask, "Who was that?"

I answer with the truth, "My mother."

EJ

Clockwork Letters

I close my eyes and my truest desire shapes and reshapes my reality. You are standing beside me. There is nothing but the rain. It is warm and the night is springtime on your tongue as you whisper my favorite prayer that begins and ends with yes.

Lately, I find myself remembering the night we made love. The connection afterward that was almost without words, quiet and still but tangible. I thought I would never have that again but I have found it just as strong in conversation, over coffee, over email, and even over time. I once thought I could only find that spark of connection -- blue fire in the night -- during love making or prayer but I realize now that I just wasn't looking hard enough.

The clock in the hallway has stopped working. The key lays on the antique table beside the sixty year old grandfather clock. I cross the wood floor in silence, without any sound at all, and I caress the lines of the key. I think of my friend Abbie spending time, joyous, as she selects just the right Tupperware organizers for her kitchen. I trace the hallows of the key and think about my friend Cris, joyous, cutting lawn greens for her herd of livestock rabbits. I pick up the key and let it slide down my fingers into my palm, the weight of it solid and real, as no time really is. I stare down at it... and then up at the still face of the clock.

I know that even if I allow it to remain asleep, the time it tracks will still pass. The cat is just as much alive as it is dead, and the possibilities of what may happen between this dawn and Christ's next are as endless as the concentric curls of the key pressed into my hand.

I hear the cab rumble to the curb. You are always standing outside waiting for it. You can't abide being late and obsess about missing your ride. In my half awake, half sleeping state, it seems we have made love every night for several weeks, but I know that can't be true. An expanse of time like that hasn't existed for either of us for years. I hear a child singing. You have left a CD of choir hymns in the stereo. A young boy's heart is poured into "The Little Drummer Boy" and I do not try to stop the tears that roll down my face.

I sink down against the wall. My eyes are still on the clock. My hand still grips the key.

I dream about harnessing the Grail in a Cathedral.

I dream that the face of the clock peals open like a Christmas orange and the clockworks, the gears and springs and tiny wires and weights, spill out slowly, slipping like something liquid, like blood or tears, down the front of the elegant case and pooling, spreading out over the floor, drowning my bare feet with time.

I didn't really understand anything then. Past present and to be tumbling into one another the way we tumble into each other's arms. No reason except truth. That one is the other and we are, like they are, much the same. I hadn't really been listening. I heard you, though. You spoke to me from the darkness of the road that night. You reached me and made me see how important it all was. How real. But I was frustrated and afraid about so many things. Afraid of failing. Afraid of success.

Time washed all that away.

Just not man's time.

At the ocean, I feel you beside me. In the cold evening waiting for dusk. In the heady breeze off the water, in the salt spray and the movement of the waves against the sand. I came home wanting to let go. To stop trying to hold on so tightly. I am tired of holding on. I'm not afraid of failing any more. Or of success. Either way, what will come, will come.

It doesn't matter if we fail or if we succeed. It doesn't matter if the journey is the entire destination. It is this fight that is my path. Not what might come of it.

As long as we stand together, what are we afraid of really? What can we lose that we truly love? No object, no place. Those things cannot command love as the feeling of your hand in mine, the whisper of your heart, audible or digital, the perfection of every small victory.

It has already been enough.

We have already changed the world.

Let the clock stay still. The Lord's time is now then forever. And everything in His time is as it should be, when it should be, and why. Dawn will come. Dusk will come. Day and night and joy and sorrow. I cannot effect these forces nor stop the earth from turning. I think I should stop trying.

After all, I need all my energy for better things.

EJ