everyskinnytree

Better late than never

2012-01-29T16:54:00.000-08:00

I'm so sorry this was missing among the archives at the old skinnytree.
Without further ado...

Visitation

she asks if there is anything she can
bring
I think first of the tree under her nest:
of the tiny maple,
the dwarf lemon
but most tenderly
the tall olive tree
(a mere branch leaning down across the soil
when she brought it home bowing, like a blessing
to her lover)

bring a branch from the olive tree, my dove:
my heart has been afloat too long now.
When you arrive, carry in your mouth the proof,
tell me
there are trees again
bursting from the horizon.
Tell me silently that the earth reaches out her arborized hands, and leafy fingers,
hoping to hold you up, proudly (loving your tiny toes curving around her fingers)
where you perch and play
and perform your miracles.
If there is solid ground again, a place to make a home,
I know you will tell me and you will bring a bit of it
wordlessly, weightlessly
leave leaves with me, my peace, my piece of home.

Working it out

2012-01-23T17:18:00.000-08:00

I knew the whole story. The pillow case in question had come from a home wherein resided 3 powerful women, one of them only just recently four years old. It had been placed on a pillow left in our classroom by a young hispanic boy who has since departed for a different school. A loving teacher placed it, the one and desirable pillow on the cot of a boy with the disposition of a 14 year old, the body (read: tear ducts) of a four year old and emotional responsibilities that rival those of any decent 34 year old.
He told me in no uncertain terms that he was a boy and didn't want a pillow with flowers on it. I said it was given to him to use if he wanted it.
To which he turned away and added, as though he were instructing me to add a pinch of salt to the recipe: "Then you're a b*&^#."
I needed a moment to think this over.

This is not the first time I have been called this... nor is it the first time I have been called such by this person. Questions raced through my mind:
Am I mad? Am I a b*&^#? is this laughable? Should I scold him? What would be the point? Which male figure in his life who speaks this way? What kind of power does that man hold? What would the other teachers do? What do I want to do? What does it mean anyway? Is there some translation guide for pre-K swears or do I need to write that myself? Should I move it up toward the top of the to-do list?
Yes. I should.

I took his little hands in mine. We walked away from the group of 16 busy bees readying for a rest time and I set his muppet sized shoulders back so his little posture would be powerful and proud as I spoke to him. I said to him I would sit but he should stand when I tell him this and then I told him
I'm so sorry.

If it hurt your feelings when you saw that pillow, I am sorry. You don't ever have to use that pillow. It's just like when I give you green beans and you don't like them. You remember that?

He told me that he doesn't like the outsides but he likes the little ones inside the green parts and asked me if I remember the little pieces inside the shells.
Yes. I remember the seeds inside the greens.
But please remember, I said, Sometimes I make a mistake. You don't have to use the words you used. They were not kind words and I know you are a kind person. You can just say, Miss Abigail, I don't like that pillow.

And we practiced using kind words instead of swear words.

I really was sorry to have offended such a smart and wonderful person. It's not that I'm a b*$^#... or that I'm not. The point is that he was trying to tell me something really important about gender identity forming and personal preferences and roles and rights and privilege...
and I had to figure out how to listen in between the words and my bias toward the words he has at his disposal.

Plenty of folks would disagree with my style of reprimand.

Some would say I'm too liberal, that he'll probably do it again or that he will never learn he can't talk to a teacher that way. They may say I've let him get away with disrespect and bad behavior. I say we all get away with disrespect and bad behavior every day. I say there are words that hurt more than swear words and a teacher better learn to listen regardless of how her students speak to her. I say he probably will do it again, in fact, I hope he does because it will give me another chance to pull him aside and legitimate his frustration with the way the world works.

Only when we are honest about frustration can we honestly express it and really move through it.

Besides who am I to make pre-K anything less than a social laboratory? Why not let him try to work it all out over and over again until he learns that this is not a very helpful word around these parts, even if it does carry weight at home or abroad? If this were a math problem I'd give him multiple chances. It's a social emotional problem and he needs all the chances he can get.
Even if it does feel really good to let it fly, it can hurt those he loves. I want him to learn this while he is yet surrounded by love instead of in search of it.

Had I returned his disrespect for my position of power with a disdain for his familial vocabulary or disrespect for his expression it would have been more confusing than corrective even to his little brilliant mind. All this is confusing enough even before we start limiting his vocabulary.

In my classroom there are no such thing as bad words, but there are lots of unkind ways of expressing your opinions. It isn't the opinions that offend in and of themselves, it is the disrespectful and disdainful expression of those opinions that causes such strife in our community. I don't want to defend my opinion of swears or pillows as though it is the only opinion or the most truthful. I even try to apply this logic to arguments over abortion, marriage equality and child-rearing... which is why I'm still learning how and when to tell you what I really think. I'm learning from four year olds--they are great teachers. When you look around my classroom you see little faces of real people on the front lines of these battles: there are folks who use my students as proof that their mothers are in search of a welfare check, that their parents should be denied basic rights as a family unit or that a single mother will never be able to raise a child on her own.

If you are still learning how to offer opinions about topics such as this, you're in good company and welcome to my classroom any time. That is the real moral of this story anyway.
Pre-K is a grandiose and functional place to sort things out. And I don't ever want to lose sight of that... if it seems as though I might, dear readers, you have every right to remind me; and I say so knowing that you will use any words you have at your disposal.

signing on

2012-01-12T20:18:00.000-08:00

Such a thing (imagine it, please, as spoken by an aging and shocked yiddish Bubela: "Sawchuh Theing!") as a contractual obligation does exist.

I was ushered into the realm of promise keeping by my father very early in life. Once he made me promise to never walk too close to the creek that ran behind my house. When I ditched one too many classes (that is, I found, the one way to get caught in the act) as a freshman in high school he addressed the issue with militant aplomb as we sat in the cab of his truck: "You're not going to do that again, are you?" To my shaking head he replied, "Well, then we don't have to talk about it again." It was a preliminary sketch of grace to be fleshed out by a steady hand over the life of the issuer.

Then, before I knew it I had signed student loan promissory notes, a marriage license and a mortgage. How does it all happen?! Terms and conditions apply to a promise. Take, for example, marriage vows: "For as long as we both shall live." But live what? Why, this life, this way--of course.

There is much consternation about folks walking away from properties--entire neighborhoods-- in foreclosure [now so far under water they are more like Atlantis than their owners ever hoped], marriages [now shadows of their former selves and partners of the same hue] or lucrative careers [now viewed from 6 months in to be more like missionary positions in the lands of remote deserted cubicle].

We keep signing on, signing up. The promises are made so that another (an other) person will know that I'm good for it, in it to win it, for the long haul. I know I'm trustworthy so it is easy for me to predict my own fidelity.

And yet... I am only looking for someone who will remain faithful to me...

But not because I need a house of my own, more money, or an ideal partner. No. I sign the dotted line because I like to make promises. I really like it, in fact.

The act of promising something is personal, basic and a means to establishing selfhood.

When I make a promise I do so knowing that I can't control anything or anyone but myself. Most promises are made in the midst of heated perceptions weaving and waving like the sight of a Death Valley highway in the noonday sun. The illusion of a solid road ahead is just enough and so I trust that I have eyes more assuredly than I trust that the road is real. I am promising to use my eyes even if the road turns out to be little more than rubble on the horizon. And in making that promise to you, I make a promise to myself, I commit to myself.

I have broken a lot of promises and reveled in the guilt of it, narcissistically so. It was much easier to focus on the guilt I conjured by speculating the other person's esteem for me had hit an all new low. The harder task was to deal with the pain of facing the reality that in doing so I was also breaking a promise to myself.

These days I sign on for gym membership, a year long certificate of deposit at a laughable financial institution or an annual contract to work at an impossible job and all these are not exactly the picture of interminable nor are they the type of commitment to keep me awake at night--whenever they do I know I'm living a life dangerously off balance anyway. I still do make the daily promises that make up life in a capitalist society and the daring commitments that determine a tradition or maybe a future but the promises that mean the most are those I can make first to myself, then to you: to be myself, to tell the truth, to be right and wrong and human and wild which means sometimes I must walk away when you wish I would stand my ground. It means sometimes I must sit still when you thought I would run to your side...
Because if I do I will also understand that you must sometimes also.
Sometimes, when the sky is clear and the restless Starlings quietly pruning, the Cricket busy with his midday chirrrrrupping, I miss the train, miss the phone call, spill the coffee and all the stuff of life's mess is close to my skin and then
I myself am,
the very someone I was looking for when I went in search of someone who will remain faithful to me.

Occupyeveryskinnytree

2011-11-26T13:20:00.001-08:00

A Dwelling

--And in the central valley,

people were dreaming of peaches.

Starlings at the scalloped edges off new blossoms.

In the night orchards,

the dreamer walked over hot coals with the poems

and made creation seem effortless--there!

What do you fear in a poem?

(I fear the moment of excess, as in March,

when oxalis comes out all in one day.)

What do you fear in the poem?

(I fear that moment of withholding--

especially inside what I thought was free;

and I feared the poem was just like her,

that it would abandon me--)

--So the poem is the story of the writing of itself.

In the white tent of the psyche

or out there in the normal fog:

the mockingbird all spring:

she looked just like a note herself,

each bit of music slipping past her

till it stopped--

each time one note missing;

it wasn't exactly a failure on her part,

she just needed something to do tomorrow.

Same thing with the poem. Perhaps

an idea came with it, an idea of fourness, the yellowness

of spring, a certain belief in the completion

of a plan. Not so now. In your dream

of wholeness, death began.

So, put yourself in the way

of the poem. It needed your willing

impediment to be written. Remember the lily,

growing through the heart of the corpse?

You had to be willing to let it through the sunshine

error of your life,

be willing not to finish it--

--Brenda Hillman, from Death Tractates

I just read this article

Poet Bashing Police

Bob and Brenda have always cared for us this way. My own copy of Death Tractates bears a little inscription from Brenda on the title page:

"For Abigail--

With many thanks

for your sequence.

Best wishes-Brenda 2-1-01"

What a corny little poem! And in pencil even, in case I should wish to erase it (wince) and thus (gasp) increase the market value of the book...

She gave our class copies of her little collection of pieces about the untimely death of a mentor and then acknowledged that our classwork had helped to pull her out of a writer's block. "I feel like we should pour gatorade over our heads. We won! We won!," She exclaimed in her tiny and potent voice.

So as I read about my dearest Brenda being severely and bodily disrespected, how she told the officers they ought to be at home reading with their children, how Bob described his own bumbling attempts to rescue her...

Well, the tears just started coming into my eyes and I tried to swallow them but they were just too many for the barricade of reasonable thoughts I tried to pit against them:

"It's not like she's your mother, for Christ's sake! Don't be so attached to the poets, the poems are still in tact..."

"She has probably been treated worse for less... She probably knew what she was getting herself into. She used to smoke in the shower--only the best of us can manage stuff like that."

"The whole article is about how they both survived the blows and things are going to be just fine. They're up and going to the gym, so that is good."

But each insensitive thought in my mind just endeared the real, annoyingly sensitive me more and more to their sweet faces and genuine kindness, to their impulse to protect and their attempts to fight for the poetic justice they hold so dearly.

I realize I am just afraid to lose their physical presence in the world; I'm afraid I might have to occupy this planet without their bodies

...and so, of course, I have once again comforted myself with their words.

If you are not in the habit of imbuing everything with ambiguity you may not have yet tried on the idea that Bob's article is quite cleverly titled. Sure, the cops used clubs but Bob and Brenda have called forth a more powerful force all this while: I can't tell you how many times Brenda urged me to "get my writing done." Those cops have another thing coming if they think they can beat Bob at his own game.

I'm taking my emotional response to the idea of beating poets as a sign that I have been trying too hard to dismiss the police brutality against the Occupy movement. I have been trying to keep it all in perspective because I am daily surrounded by terrible abuses of power and the victimization of the impoverished in my midst. I have been so immersed in bringing up the children in the way that they should go that I have not done my best to put myself in the shoes of the protestors, to put myself in the way...

And all because I was afraid to add to my own already intense sense of powerlessness this new flavor of futility and frustration. What was I afraid my feelings would do?... Have I not yet learned that these frustrations fuel the fire of my best work? Did I forget how much kinetic energy is stored up in my anger?

Good grief.

Since the skinnytree is my way of reaching out and confessing I thought I should send up my little flare of awareness, hoping you will see it and locate yourself nearby...

I am posting this little piece so as to be held accountable for asking myself again and again about my fears of poems and poets, of losing a mentor and having to put myself in the way when others can not. In the violent times I must not be afraid of my own voice; my pitiful silence may be the one thing I can overcome... and so here it is, tumbling out in lines and circles for everyone to see

I promise I will try my best to put myself in the way of the poem Occupy is writing

for Bob and Brenda and you and me.

It's a funny thing for me to try to understand the Occupy phenomenon.
For the sake of clarity, here is how I see it:
The people who have been ignored would like to take up space in a visible place so that they my hear and be heard as well as see and be seen. If that is indeed the case, then I say every time you remember those folks living in tents in public spaces, punched or pepper sprayed just for being visible, mention them kindly, think of them fondly or even just wonder about what it is they are up to, you have become somewhat preoccupied, if not altogether occupied by their cause.

It took me a little extra time to get on board but now that I am emotionally involved, I welcome your skepticism or praise (whatever you have on hand) and proudly link arms with those hairy wary crazies who are, as one occupykst member put it, "just occupyin' ever'where."

The skinnytree is officially

Occupied as only it could be,

as the poet said,

"In the white tent of the psyche

or out there in the normal fog:"

I don't often write love songs... usually lamentations

2011-11-16T17:47:00.001-08:00

Probably because I am officially and often in mourning when I realize that I have to get up to go to work in the morning whenever I am painfully aware that my birds are growing--they can't help it, even now, as they sleep through the night...

There is always

((a lurch of honesty and the stench)

ketchup in your smile.

You can't wait to tell me the news:

the front page is caught in the arms

of the trees and you are learning the word for branches

as you learn the words for miracles like orange and autumn and leave.

I am teaching you to blow kisses, to ask for help,

to refuse forcible apology

with grace

as frailties burst forth and limbs fly.

You teach me to

walk (slowly) and speak (carefully) and to be (sure)

with myself and a song.

Today

is for you this one page

in one book is enough;

we will feel the paper of it under our fingers

chew on the words and then press them out, sending them out

blowing consonant bubbles into the stillness

seven times (perfectly)

you will finish what I've begun

and then you will curl and snore a little, mildly, like a wildly exhausted housecat and promise to

dance when you wake and

morning milk mustaches portend

muscular strivings to bake a cake of the sand: with ingredients you had on hand

or pry the clothing off a baby doll

and I am ever in mourning that this will not last;

we will be lost

to it?

in it?)

tomorrow.

we the underpaid: priceless

2011-09-14T19:12:00.000-07:00

She said he was a problem.
It's no wonder they call them knitted eyebrows because whenever I knit my eyebrows they tend to be close knit--we're talking an absolutely smartwool sort of knit--because they often hover and cover one pretty damn cold stare.
I didn't care who I was talking to or why; I only thought of the boy. (It was a lot like the day the 5.8 magnitude earthquake hit and I (the cali native) ran inside, past the other adults standing in the doorway for safety, thinking only of the napping 3 and 4 year olds in my care rather than worrying about best thing to do during a DC earthquake).
I ran straight into the crumbling structure of her bias; I was all set to grab this kid and pull him out of harm's way.
"He is not a problem."I said, as if telling her the simple facts. It sounded like I was assuring her he was not allergic to peanuts.
"Well, he has a problem." She was persistent; I'll give her that. She is supposed to be some kind of specialist, afterall.
"I'm sure there are problems. I don't see him as a problem, I don't even see that he has problems. I'm sure there is a problem but it isn't him." We were knee deep in it as though conjugating Spanish verbs.
"Oh, I didn't mean that, I just meant, he's got problems."
And then, thank gawd, some(tiny)one spilled milk or needed a second helping of cheerios and was kind enough to ask for help from me.
+++++
Most of my friends are looking for meaningful employment while they worry their skills are underutilized in service industry positions. I am no exception; I have three very practical master's degrees and the savvy that comes with the nine years I spent working on them them. Still, I am currently working as an assistant teacher due to DC's strict licensure requirements and so find myself among my peers thinking maybe I should have bought $120,000 in lottery tickets instead of degrees. And yet...

I can't help but think maybe, just maybe my cat-like reflexes (cat-like that is when it comes to early childhood advocacy) are not underutilized, not under-appreciated, nor under-rated... by those who need them most.

Maybe, just maybe, it takes a Graduate level certification issued by a California State University system to know the difference between the words "is", "has" and "deals with" when they precede the word "problems". Maybe it takes a Master's level certification in listening to really hear the difference and maybe a 4 year degree in Divinity (though it didn't get me any closer to the divine) has (in fact) prepared me to watch for the opportunity to offer grace in the face of violence, to refrain from hitting a child even when encouraged to do so, to refrain from berating, shaming, or excluding a child at all costs.

If it were easy everyone would be able to do it and if someone were able to put a price tag on it I'd probably be pretty well-paid. It's not easy, it's a rare thing of beauty to have such opportunities to help re-write the story of one little boy. I'm not well paid because the things I am able to do for my little birds are priceless... I've got to remember that. I've just got to. I've got to keep that kind of truth close. I'll go crazy if I don't because it doesn't make sense. (no effing sense). Sometimes the skinnytree is the best way to keep the truth close.

But the good news is this: Just as sure as there is no way these birds or their families will ever repay me for the things I work so hard to accomplish for and with them (thank gawd they won't have to), there is the fact that I reap the glorious and glowing harvest of their affection, trust and respect every day. In all our glory we are everyday pressed-down, shaken together and running over because we are not problems; we are loved. We're open from 7am to 6pm; we're effing here if you need us--especially at nap time.

Call it Pre-K, call it early childhood, call it what you will, but don't call it a problem when we struggle with executive brain functions like impulse control or higher level processing. There are problems we face but we face them together without blame or shame or violence.

And you probably do too. You just have to look very closely, search out the anti-blame, the anti-shame and the anti-violence in you. Follow it's trail the way you watched ants when you were small. When you find a tiny spot of gratitude crawling along your path or defying gravity as it scales the wall near your face (I swear, if you don't see these moments of your own worth you'll go absolutely nuts in this economy and that is a promise).

We the priceless underpaid--sure you're included, welcome aboard--we are not a problem;
we are learning to live
in the problems with patience and creativity. We use our words, not our fists; we apologize a lot and rely on our short-term memories, we drink lots of water and get a nap in if we can.
We are, well, learning to live
in a world riddled with problems all the while assuring each other you are not one of them, I am not a problem either.
We are learning to live
in love, and if you ask me that just means
We are learning to live.

like a bridge...

2011-05-23T11:24:00.000-07:00

It was rumored that, at some point, the bridge had railings and so was at least 95% safer than it was looking yesterday. Turns out the railings may have given it the appearance of safety but they would have been misleading...

Months ago we decided we wanted to have some way to mark the transition from the Nursery/Preschool room to the Elementary Age classroom. In preliminary discussion someone brought up a certain concern and I said, "Let's cross that bridge when we get to it." (Jeezee chreezee, I say that a lot. There is a lot of water under my bridges but I expect to keep coming to bridges and crossing them.) She tabled her initial concern and turned the discussion toward a little bridge, a real bridge of wood and woodscrews, somewhere in the attic. "Let's get it down," she said. "Let's use it." The idea was to invite each child to walk across the stage, commencement style. We would add the bridge as an extra element, a simple symbol and have a little fun.

I will admit here and now that if I know one thing about Children's Ministry it is just this: the moment you think you're about to do something just for the fun of it, you've crossed over into dangerous territory. The fun thing usually turns out to be the thing that begins to shore us up with fresh energy with which we actually engage in the event and that is when miracles may be witnessed, amigos. When we look back it is more often than not the fun thing that rises like a flare and explodes with meaning, pointing us back to the moments we ought not neglect.

The bridge was laid of fencing slats, just wide enough for a 5 year old foot to balance upon with space between each slat big enough for such a tiny foot to slip right through. Moreover it was waist high to most of them at its crest. It rose up from the floor in front of the altar like a perfect half circle and they approached it the way they would offer fearful reverence to the ladder behind their new favorite slide. We practiced. They lined up and took turns while their parents rallied amid the pre-service hymnsing.

One bird took off her new orange flower flip flops and left them on the yellow decorative tulle flanking the baptismal font. Earlier that morning she had told her mother this was the most important day of her life. She looked in my face, smiled with her eyes and told me, "I want to do it by myself."
"I'll be here if you fall." I told her and stayed close.

A little boy approached, considered climbing up on all fours. He changed his mind, balanced carefully arms outstretched like the cross behind us and stopped at the top for just a moment. He was suddenly three feet taller and decided to take advantage of this grown up perspective on the sanctuary. When he was done looking around he jumped off, sticking the landing with a thud of sneakers on hardwood.

The next little one took my hand like the daughter of the king and looked down at her feet. She considered where to put each toe and whether it was safe to put her weight down. She stopped before the descent and considered the consequences, should her satin slipper slip. I offered, "I can help you down, my dear." And she accepted by nodding and smiling a smile full of five year old grace and dignity.

Even with the mild chaos that ensued when we invited all their friends, siblings, parents, and teachers up to share the stage they bravely ascended and crossed over to be greeted and welcomed by their elders in faith. I don't know if any of the congregants' blood pressure rose as they watched those little ones carefully, joyously and almost expertly crossing the bridge. I don't know if they were afraid the little ones would fall off and break an arm. I was, at first. But as I watched their little bodies rise on strong legs and strength of will I knew I would not be able to keep them from getting hurt, from falling or failure or anything else in the future.

It's commencement season. And whether you're crossing a stage or not, commencement season is a reminder that circumstances change, people change, life asks us to cross over from one place to the next. We will either go bravely or we won't. We will rush through it, take it all on at once, force ourselves, or we won't. Sometimes we can ignore the meaning in the moments, sometimes we can't. There is no wrong way, but there are choices to make and responsibility to take.
Soon enough I will put on my high heel lady shoes, climb the stairs toward the president, faculty and deans of my graduate school and, even though I told them, "I think I can do this," there is no telling what will happen. I may very well reach out to shake their hands one last time and feel a flood of relief that I didn't have to do it alone.

I've been shaking a lot of hands lately. It isn't easy. Sometimes I just want a familiar face or even just to keep to myself.
Sometimes, just when I am sure I couldn't possibly greet another new face with confidence and a firm grip, just when I think I should be able to be or do on my own, I have to reach out. In those moments I have been reminded that a handshake is a lot like a hand to hold. As soon as I want to shrink back from the forced greetings and scary meetings I have to wonder what good might come if I just reach out my hand. There is a way for the shaking hands to stop the shaking, quaking legs I am standing on... but I don't think I'll ever get to know that way of steady if I can always balance on my own.

Many times I've explained to the families of 5 year olds that it is okay to set expectations a little lower and to take it slow; there are lots of scary things coming up in the near future: torrents of emotion, a deluge of cultural expectations and the raging, rapid influx of adaptations to make or at least consider making... And though I could very well be describing a move across the country, I'm really just describing the first day of kindergarten. There will be lots of bridges and lots of troubled water to cross and lots of times it will be safer to have a friend nearby and take it slow.

My best plan today is to hold hands with friends, shake hands with enemies, and cross the bridges bravely... not all at once but bravely and only as I come to them.

The inte(great)ive project presentation aka: what I look like when I really mean it.

2011-04-25T11:21:00.000-07:00

And anyway, if I'm going to be crying on the internets... it might as well show up here too.

Integrative Project Presentations 2011 - Abigail Vizcarra Perez from Mars Hill Graduate School on Vimeo.

The final final

2011-04-06T18:23:00.000-07:00

I had one last chance to earn a grade, after five years of working toward my MDiv.
The assignment was called a self evaluation.
It is my best attempt at what the professor required by way of explanation as to how I had interacted with the readings, lectures, classmates.
It turned out much more like a goodbye than I had intended but sometimes a corny title is just the thing for a poem I am proud of.

Saying Goodbye
The birds asked me to dance but
I know they are better suited to fly.
They passed over and told the mountains not to weep, sang them to sleep until
The clouds above them froze
Amply against winter’s invisible edge.
Their pebbles begged to be
carried home—knowing
they are pieces of places
We have been together.
I explain it to the tiniest ones this way:
“You may come to know
It will cost you an ocean,
A species of tree and your old way of listening
To the sounds of rain,
You may come if
you wish to see.”
The dandelions (yellowed teeth flutter) in a southbound wind,
The rhythm of tides beat rocks left to right themselves.
“You may come to find
there are lightening bugs and thunder storms, equally a-fright.
And the grasses grow jealously all year staring
up with the emerald eyes of spring.”
They answer,
Growing is a movement,
and stumbled,
One more salutation.

the question

2011-03-18T09:53:00.000-07:00

When you understand,
Do your muscles relax, sinews limpen and skin soften?
Does your heart race, the bow of your smile quicken and quiver?
Do the tiny hairlings on each limb rise up and test
the breeze rushing between us?
Do you knit your brow with needless bewilderment because you are shocked
You finally see what I see and think what I think and
hope that it will fit always as it does right now?

And what do the words sound like, how harshly do they thump against your cochlea, bump against your own,
as they rise from my mouth, worked up and wound round through my bowels, into my throat without getting caught and then sliding between sharp whittled accented tonguing and even sharper teeth..?
Is the intonation atonal or attuned to yours?
What is the nature of being understood and being understanding if you do not understand?
Will we run to meet, across an acre of cultivated crops or spelunk a river bed with stagnant waters alongside,
Are my thoughts and I
A flock of geese migrating,
a pair of bald eagles mating,
one mosquito with malaria waiting,
For you,
For me and you?

Berry picking

2011-03-11T09:03:00.000-08:00

Wendell Berry is one of my favorite writers. Sure, he is white, and a male of the species. But there is a tender fight within him that comes shining through on behalf of land and lovers (two of my favorite inventions). So when a man like that has the opportunity to whisper in the President's ear and takes the opportunity to speak well of a woman's love for tending earth, I wonder at all the good that will come of it.

Say what you will about Obama; he is a politician after all. Though I am qualified to accomplish a great many tasks, I am not qualified to cast the first stone upon hypocrites. Furthermore, I know I run the risk of contradicting my previously admitted distaste for folks who take gardening privileges for granted. But Berry's nuanced love for properly tending our land on a grand scale is more closely akin to my concerns than it might seem at first blush.

At the end of an article describing the awards ceremony to honor other artists alongside Mr. Berry, Obama is quoted as having encouraged us thusly:
“We have to remember that our strength as a people runs deeper than our military might; it runs deeper than our GDP — it’s also about our values and our ideals that each generation is called to uphold, and that each artist helps us better understand.”

and I sounded my barbaric yawp accordingly.

You can read the entire article for yourself if you need some good news for a change.

A list for you.

2011-02-28T13:08:00.000-08:00

Have I told you about my self-ish theory? It goes like this: The people I experience as selfish always seem to be acting out of a vague sense of what they want and who they want to be. I see them repeat patterns of behavior that infringe on the rights of others in such a way as to assert the fact that they have a self at the expense of those around them. I figure that if these people really had a solid sense of self to work with, they wouldn't have to impinge, infringe and otherwise cross boundaries in unhealthy ways.
I don't know if it will jive with your experience of the world, but it certainly rings true for me.

So in the interest of understanding where my self ends and another person's self begins, or--even better!--where my self begins and another self ends, I have made a little list of lists that anyone might make in order to get to know the self they have, the self they don't and thus be less self-ish (I'm using the suffix "ish" here to delineate dabbling or unfinished: as in, "it's not really brown, but brownish" or "not really nice, only nice-ish"). I for one would much rather have a reliable self, than be only sort of self-ish.

The following is a list of lists I make, sometimes for my self, sometimes all by myself but usually when I feel most self-ish so I can figure out my real self.

things that hurt me
things that heal me
things I know for sure

think(g)s I believe
things I can't do
things I know I can

things that reflect back to me the love I am and have like trees and ladybugs and good stories. Like Jesus cursing the fig tree, giant pancakes and maybe even you)

people I trust and why I trust some things I think about them

Thin(k)gs I need to say and who I'd like to say them to and lastly
if I will.

promises I should have made, and some I wish I hadn't
promises I could have kept and some I wish I didn't

mistakes I'm glad I made and some I wish I had made
but mostly I like to think on things that wake compassion within me and those I love.

There you have it. It's quite a project to get a self, until then self-ish will have to do because I'm not, at the moment, a huge fan of selfless, even though it is highly respected. In my humble opinion it is not often done well and most of the time it isn't entirely necessary and then there are even the times when it is just a disguise anyway...

more poetry for a good cause

2011-01-29T10:11:00.000-08:00

I said I'd be here if you need me... and I meant it.
Come hear poems from everyskinnytree at ...

A Benefit Concert for Jackie Stewart Walstead

Jackie Stewart Walstead was recently diagnosed with breast cancer and is undergoing final treatments for chemotherapy. A student at Mars Hill Graduate School, she is completing her final year in the Counseling-Psychology program.

To help her with medical and personal costs, her friends are hosting a concert and silent auction to raise money on her behalf. Please come out and support her as we celebrate her courage.

7:00p-9:30p, February 11th in the MHGS Commons (aka Student Lounge)
There will be a suggested $5 donation at the door.

We are still creating our set list and gathering items to be auctioned.

If you would like to participate, please contact Catherine Golden (catgold123@gmail.com), Grant Guiley (gguile85@gmail.com) or Colleen Barrows (colleenbarrows@gmail.com) for more information.

Performing... Musicians: Holly Grigsby, Robert Deeble, John Hardt,
Poet: Abigail Vizcarra Perez

Partial list of Items to be auctioned:

Jewelry by Colleen Barrows
Photography by Talitha Bullock
2 tickets to the Intiman Theater
Handmade journal by Mike Menconi
Videography by Eratosthenes Fackenthall
Portrait Session by HMJ Photography
Artwork by Chris Ramsdale
Photography by Josh Longbrake

it's do! do! doo-doo, due, and dude...

2010-12-09T10:50:00.000-08:00

I'm feeling "very undude, dude... dude..."

"Where is My Mind?" -pixies...

With your feet in the air and your head on the ground
Try this trick and spin it, yeah
Your head will collapse
But there's nothing in it
And you'll ask yourself

Where is my mind

Way out in the water
See it swimmin'

I was swimmin' in the Caribbean
Animals were hiding behind the rocks
Except the little fish
But they told me, he swears
Tryin' to talk to me, coy koi.

Where is my mind

Way out in the water
See it swimmin' ?

With your feet in the air and your head on the ground
Try this trick and spin it, yeah
Your head will collapse
If there's nothing in it
And you'll ask yourself

Where is my mind

Oh
With your feet in the air and your head on the ground
Oh
Try this trick and spin it, yeah

The first Chapbook!

2010-11-19T15:43:00.000-08:00

It's almost ready...

I included some of your favorites, some prose, and some pieces that I haven't published online because the formatting ruins the linebreaks. So they'll be new to you!

Each book comes with a CD of readings by yours truly (you asked for it; you got it).

They're for sale: $10 each.
Proceeds from tomorrow night's Free Form sales will benefit
the Free Form Charity of Choice:
Collective Hope.

So bring your dollas--
Hope to see you there!

Mars Hill Graduate School
2501 Elliot Ave.
Seattle WA
11/20/2010 8pm

ordination examination

2010-11-18T20:23:00.000-08:00

I just thought you should know this is where I'm at right now.

I easily confuse strengths with weaknesses. So, when my professor asked what I was going to do when—not if—I fail to bring order to chaos, I panicked. I thought that surely failure to order the chaos would be a sign of profound weakness. Then this same professor asked us to describe ourselves from the perspective of a friend. I thought back to the words of one of my more observant and attentive bosses. In my exit interview he told me that when I told him I would be okay, he believed me. He said, “I’ve always known you to be sturdy.” Perhaps I shouldn’t have panicked at the thought of chaos. Perhaps the idea that I may reveal a weakness should not scare me! I have a very high tolerance for both weakness and chaos. I know them intimately and, as a result, I tend to those in my care as though chaos is durable yet endurable.
As I look back on this professor’s class in particular I see that my time under his tutelage has paralleled the trajectory of my seminary education in general. We began by trying to minimize the chaos. We set out to do the work of defining ourselves and have found that we are very confused (and confusing). We have learned that we, the weak and befuddled, do indeed have power and must steward it gently.

Over these last four and a half years I have gained some practical wisdom (summed up by the professor of this class when he said “you will never satisfy all the people all the time… if you are doing your job well”). I also gained some impractical wisdom (e.g.: postmodern or no, leading means you have to land somewhere). And then, just when I think I’ll never remember this wisdom, it always dawns on me (again and again, as sure as a sunrise) that I’m not sure how I learned any of these things because they are not the kind of things that can be taught in the usual ways. Maybe they were in me all along and I just needed someone to help me dismantle all the carefully laid and mortared, well-ordered thoughts that had them entombed.

My time in graduate school has facilitated a re-entry into church leadership as part of a larger process. “Churching” (attending church, potlucking, becoming a member of a church, tithing, voting, singing hymns you like, singing hymns you don’t like, etc., …) is a process. It is a process of discovering how much order, how much chaos is enough for each created thing to thrive and then making a commitment to searching out ways for all to access that amount of whatever is needed. It is a system of exchange: churching is not only giving time, talent and treasure, but a system of exchanging tangibles and intangibles according to our capacity for restraint and justice.
Taking a leading role in the life of the Church requires us to accept only the order that blesses, while allowing for the chaos that edifies and that means we participate in discovery, discernment, and setting boundaries. It doesn’t mean we have to be perfect already—we will be perfected. It doesn’t mean we put an end to all chaos—it means we order the chaos we can and endure the chaos that remains, for the good of all.

There is no disputing that when I accept my Master’s degree in Divinity I am taking a step toward ordination. This degree will set upon me certain rights and responsibilities, one of which is to discern next steps. I have to face the possibility of Ordination and I have discovered that for now I will settle into what I like to think of as one of two very different types of ordination. The way I see it there are two kinds of ordination: 1) Traditional Ordination: This kind of Ordination to the Ministry of Word and Sacrament is offered by the people in power. It usually comes with a title chosen from a short list of jobs. Certain rights and responsibilities are conferred on an individual after s/he has completed certain required tasks. The other kind of ordination is one I like to think of as Discerned Ordination: This ordination is realized through a process of discernment. For example, God has ordained each member of the church to accomplish a different task to the glory of God. This kind of ordination is akin to receiving a vocation that is discovered through a series of struggles and triumphs.

Each member of the body is tested, taught and otherwise prepared to live life according to the powers, rights and responsibilities only God can confer. There is plenty of power to go around but we rarely share it well. The politically inept or disenfranchised may never partake or participate in a way that would allow them to be Ordained as Ministers of Word and Sacrament in a traditional sense. The second definition of ordination, however is a broader use of the concept of ordination and so applies to those who remain socially or politically powerless or outside the narrow sphere of the mainline denominations’ influence.

You see, church is only Church when all the members of the body must come alongside one another in order to create opportunities for leaders to gain and relinquish power, to share and redistribute power for all of God’s people. For church leaders special attention should be paid to specific preparations. This should include fostering an awareness of the language and history of the God we attempt to serve and the people we live with and near—all of them. I work primarily with children who have their own ways of distributing power and so it seems only natural that I am choosing the second type of ordination.

I am choosing to answer the call to order the chaos for which I have already been prepared. Maybe one day I will do more to prepare for Traditional Ordination. But for now I do not see myself participating in the cycle of power distribution that bestows power on the few and neglects the ordination of the many.

This is my call to live in the liminal space, the space in which we may dwell so that someday we will know what to do with relationships that don’t move at the speed of Facebook; when my sense of time is different than yours; or
when industry or denominational changes keep pace with cultural changes that never seem to lead to transformation. These are not Holy Orders, but they have brought holy order to my life and so though this is not the kind of Ordination for which I thought I was preparing, it is nonetheless the orders and order I have been given.

too many of these lately

2010-11-18T13:32:00.000-08:00

El Dia de los Muertos comes every year and every year it reminds me that I have been taught about death in certain ways.

I have a certain contribution to make whenever we discuss endings.

I wrote this piece in August last year and then uncovered it on the occasion of two very sad and very unexpected deaths. I didn't know the two who passed away, only the way their friends and families remember them. But I know a lot about death... more than I care to know, more than I thought I knew until it came pouring out last year and stayed relevant after all this time...
I don't know what you're going through but I do know this much...
and I hope that might be a little helpful.

080109:

There are days when I wish the story would end. Entire days devoted to frustration because the mystery of you is complete, but refuses to go away; I am haunted by the loss of you. And I have to live with memories that are just not enough.

Like this feeling when a relationship carries on with only a dead body, with a voice that I won’t hear again, with two arms that will never hold me again, two hands that will never pour out a beer or clutch the steering wheel as we careen down the highway,

the kind and hilarious things you said to me echo in my heart, but only there and it is proof that this heart is empty, cavernous, stone, cold and hardening with every throbbing pumping jerking motion, and it doesn’t stop just because yours has. You aren’t going to call anymore, you are not going to comfort me even over the phone anymore. I have missed you before, assumed your voice is enough, convinced myself it was but
now even that is gone.

And I am not ashamed (because you taught me to be proud of who I am) to admit that I am shrinking and filled with regret. Worst of all, sometimes I wish I had never loved you. I want to rewrite the story so it would end before you walked into that bar, before you jumped into that river to save a life more precious than your own.

And I am not ashamed to cry over it because that is all my body wants to do now. I can’t sleep or eat because I am somehow keeping vigil, holding on to the last meal we shared, the last restful night when I was assured I would see you in the very next day.

I can’t even hope anymore, not in the same things I used to, because all my hopes were wrapped up in you.

I can’t see the future because it was in your face and now we will bury it under the days that keep unfolding without regard for your disappearance and we will keep only photographs. And I will wake up tomorrow and stare at the photos and then
Perhaps I will start in with the yelling, the telling you off, the crying out to God or my friends or my lovers because it is not fair, it is not right, it is not ok that you aren’t coming around anymore.

So here we are, those you abandoned unwillingly, maybe. We are waiting for signs, for friendly faces, for warm bodies, for snacks and laughter and for it all to mean something again. We need something to boss us into hoping again. We need you.

And because all we have, is an already fading memory of what you would have wanted, I am clinging to it.

We begrudgingly admit that we know what you would have said. We know what you would have done because we know what you did:
you saw a choice and you made it.
You knew a risk and you took it.
You saw danger and you jumped right in.
You saw pain and you did all you could to end it.

Forgive us our anger—we know you can. And forgive us our sadness and our hopelessness—we know that if you could, you would hold us and tell us everything is going to be okay. We know you would cringe to see how upset we are and we know one thing for sure,
if you could you would rescue all of us from all of this.

I guess that is the work left for us to do now, in your absence, in your honor. We will keep you alive and with us by remembering
to rescue, to risk, to live, to play and laugh.
And when we forget the timber of your voice, or wonder what would have been,
we will remember, we will comfort ourselves with this fact:
you didn’t give up hope, you were unafraid of your own death, you were bold and loving and hopeful, and we can be too because you showed us how.

sensible of conditions

2010-11-17T12:14:00.001-08:00

A professor sent this quote in response to the piece mi abuelito affectionately referred to as "the one about the baptismal fountain":

"...a favorite Annie Dillard quote: On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies' straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews."

nuevo apellido viejo

2010-11-10T14:43:00.001-08:00

As Basque I have learned to understand this: It's very important to know what you're fighting for, especially if you were born fighting... and it's very important to know that when you fight for freedom there are particulars that make the fighting and the freedom more and more real if the battle scars refuse to fade.

I spent the last long months fighting for two things that I see as indicators of freedom: a new name and an unknown future.

First, I fought because names matter to me. Your name is like a little poem written about you, just you, never forget that. I wanted the name of my living grandmother because it is beautiful and worthy and so is she and so am I. I didn't return to my mother's maiden name (I am no longer a maiden). I returned instead to the Bay of Biscay and the Basque shepherding ancestry that taught me the wonky kind of Vizcarra shepherding that makes me valuable in my community. I returned to the name you cry out in a crowded room because you can trust there will be at least one Perez to answer! If you want something done, ask a Perez.
I kept part of the name my mother chose for me because it is a tangible connection to her hopes for me to be known and treated as a Pearl of great price. But the latter half I replaced.

Now my name is half and half: a lovely blend of whole creamy freedom-fighting sheep's milk Vizcarra Perez with even-keeled, transparent and staunchly imaginative Abigail Pearl.

But I also fought because of inheritance. I fought for the pennies scrimped and saved and passed on to me so lavishly by the woman whose name I let go.

That is why this poem goes here. It is about moving on because you have to, it is about death in general but my mother's mother dying in particular... Funny, I put it here around this exact time last year... so if you go back in the archives you'll see another story about it... I take it to be proof that a helpful poem has more than one use, more than one story to tell, and probably knows the future better than it's author.

As soon as they called to tell me she had died, I called the hospital and told them I wanted to see her body; I wanted to see her one last time. The voice on the other end said, "it will all be all right." And the hoping poem began there...

The hope poem

When you died you were wearing a pink nightgown and looking quite vulnerable as the rigor washed over you.
Your pale skin had a power over us, what was left
of your thinning hair refused to rest
against the pillow.
You were the dead with a bed head
and you would have laughed at yourself, the way you always had.

They said you weren’t alone, and I suspect
there may have been a nurse in the room when the last little bit of life fell
out of you, rolled across the floor in search of another haunt,
across the hall perhaps?
Maybe a memory of family lodged in the corner of your quiet little brain
finally showed itself
a picture of you with your sister
keeping you company.

Then eventually
we arrived, gathering like seagulls on the cliff
Standing over,
your little brittle body, like a precipice and we, forced to jump toward
(your) death,
our life,
Suddenly unsure of my wings,
I began asking the questions:

Who will I be
now that you
are gone?
What will I do with the voice that sounds like yours bouncing around
in my memory?
When I say your name again you will not answer;
Will I be angry in your absence? Will I be anything at all?
What do I want now that you are gone, after my desire for your love defined me, your presence filled spaces and now those spaces are like wounds:
You cut yourself
out of my skin,
You widdled the edges of my self coming close to you
wielding guilt like a pocket knife.
Though Love has cauterized the edges
The pain is real.
Disappointment threatens to move in like an infection
If we deny the Lacrimal disinfecting.
There is swelling and throbbing but there is no emptiness here.

We are full and heavy with your presence among us.
The words for your leaving are caught in our throats
So we gave in to hope, not the big Hope
But the little hopes:
That we will each touch your hand once then
Look into your face then
Then go eat breakfast
Without you.
That we will sing your favorite songs and eat your favorite foods then
That we will remember you well, not fully but
With respect
fully.

Not for you
For ourselves.
We will hold onto what we enjoyed and sort out
The painful pieces of your presence remaining.
We will find a way to leave them behind,
In our own time
Not just because you died
But because we have been working on that project since the day we were born.

And all this time we must have thought we were doing this for you, with you
But now you are gone and we go on.

We go on in the ways you taught us
Saying the words you said
And laughing
Saying the words you said
And raging like a wild fire
cuts a swath through the forest of story.
but we are the forest people
loving the tall trees crowding the fueling dueling underbrush—we know what fire means
what fire brings:
the heat the seeds need
to tell them how the old is dying, drying and burning away
making room for (the new)
you.

We are the Phoenix seeds, rising slowly from the acid of the ashes.

You asked to be cremated, never knowing (how hot) our anger
was burning you alive all this time.
You shrieked at us, and we put the fire out with our tears,
now the tears come all salt and oil: splashing across the fire, sizzling, splattering and finally crystallized across the soiled floor,
You are the salt of the earth and we have salted the field crying over the loss of your dried marrow.

Looking across, bearing the pall, it seems all (hope) is lost
Just because you are lost.
But the truth is we are not lost
Just because we are losing you.

for the caretakers

2010-11-08T13:06:00.000-08:00

Thank you

The rooster woke me this morning,
warning
the sun rise
while I laid still beneath the patchwork of memories.

Would the lambs and ducklings sleep all day
if the howl of the bantam were not fowl enough to wake them?
Oh cocky doodle-doo!
How many innocents, exhausted with a new life,
would miss this dawn and the next,
if you didn’t sound your barbaric yawp over the rooftops?

A city rain pools below:
the sounds of strangers bounce between raindrops,
their brash splashing tires screech out a counterpoint,

But the once-wild cockerel wakefully cooped inside my heart
scratched earlier than the boots against the sidewalk below
and I mistook it for a hope of my own.

The Shekinah Gory:

2010-11-04T23:21:00.000-07:00

The Dangers of Worshipping and Other Reasons to Keep Children Close

Contrary to most assumptions, a person can drown in a puddle. You only need a little bit of water to drown the old self and that is why we had a shallow, open baptismal font in the center aisle of our church. It was pretty basic: a glass bowl tucked inside a wooden pedestal. Some churches use a font that remains covered all the time. These fonts are often placed near a back wall, where they safely stand their ground until we bring them front and center as needed. This story is not about that kind of font.
This story is about a font that stood right in the middle of everything, like a birdbath—always open for business of one kind or another. Whenever the congregation processed toward the altar rail to receive communion they peered into it or poked the waters with their fingers. I hadn’t worked for the church long before I saw a four year old dip his hand in and then straighten his eyebrows with the holy water on his fingertips. Parents carrying babies walked carefully around it on their way to sit on the altar steps for children’s word. I once tripped on the shaggy rug underneath, nearly falling right in, face first. There was even an incident involving junior high girls washing their faces in it during an overnight youth event.
This font and its big brothers (one medium and one large horse trough brought out and filled with warmed water for full submersion baptisms) were in constant use. There were lots of babies and even grown ups cycling through preparations to drown in front of God and everyone—Alleluia! The fonts were always there and always ready.
Late in Lent 2010 the pastoral staff realized that despite our best efforts some of the babies just weren’t ready for baptism at the Grand Easter Vigil that year. It would be the first time, in a long time, that we would simply affirm baptisms rather than perform them at this annual celebration. We were saddened a little, but only because we loved seeing the shock on a child’s face before the plunge. We loved watching a grown man rise drenched and happy as we sang and rang in the new member of our family. This year the shallow font would stand stalwart and lovely as ever, not to be used for baptism proper, but as a reminder that we had all been washed—Alleluia just the same!
We continued the usual preparations for a raucous and holy celebration of resurrection. The grown up choirs learned a song in ancient Hebrew and a Spiritual that brought tears to our eyes even during rehearsals. The children’s choirs learned a special dance. During rehearsals the older children partnered with the younger to hold hands, they wound themselves around the edge of the sanctuary and danced up the aisle. They raised their little hands, turned around and around, stepped lightly forward, and then carefully high-fived …the whole lot enjoyed themselves immensely as their beloved director gently corrected any missteps.
During one such rehearsal, just as I ushered the younger children into the sanctuary to join the dance, we heard a loud bang. I instructed the children to halt and we stood as still as we could to asses the damage. It wasn’t an explosion in the kitchen or a falling beam from the ceiling. The roof hadn’t caved in, as we might have thought from the volume of the boom. Instead, we saw the wooden pedestal of the baptismal font lying on its side like a felled tree and all around, sprayed out evenly across the carpet were tiny shards of glass. The bowl that had held the Holy Water had shattered and spread like diamonds thrown at the foot of the processional cross.
During the dancing one of the older girls had bumped the font and accidentally pushed it over. She cried from the scare, wounded only in spirit, not in flesh. The pastor scooped her into his arms as the children and I stood watching him calm her. We listened silently to him explaining that it is really all right, just an accident. Her tears were pouring out as a testimony to her love for the font and respect for the worship space. She sat in the lap of her pastor soaking up the truth that she is wholly forgiven. There were only four adults in the room with upwards of thirty children ranging in age from five to twelve… and thousands of shards of broken glass.
I’m sure it comes as no surprise that I have been warned that the sanctuary is not a good place to bring children to dance. And obviously I was worried for the children to be so close to the dangerous remains of the font. But in this moment the warnings and worrying were all for naught. Our attempts to protect our children from their own frailty, the sharp shards of the truth and the danger of dancing at the water’s edge were muted by the thunder of the falling font in which most of them had already been drowned.
Alan Hirsch writes in The Forgotten Ways Handbook about the rabbinical teaching that explains “a cosmic crash in which God’s glory was scattered into myriad sparks and caught up in all created matter.” He explains that this metaphor urges us to respond to creation in such a way that God’s glory (The Shekinah) will be loosed from it’s locatedness within each created thing, and that The Shekinah might explode all around us. If Hirsch is right, if this is really what the Rabbis taught us, and what God hopes for us, then safety is little more than an illusion anyway. God’s explosive, gory glory has always threatened to engulf each human ever exposed to it… just check the Old Testament for hearts that won’t stop burning and faces that won’t stop glowing.
Since the falling font incident I have begun attending a different church with a font of a seemingly safer kind: covered and stowed—not out of view, just out of the line of fire, so to speak. In this new church children are swept away to a safer more comfortable Sunday School room before the prayer concerns and sermon are spoken. But Hirsch hints that glory finds a way to wreak holy havoc on leaders and followers alike in spite of safety precautions. And that begs the question: if there is no way to protect our children should we attempt to send them somewhere safer while the adults continue with worship? Should they be excused from sitting in oversized pews against which they always bonk their giant heads? Maybe they should be excused so they can avoid a parent’s scornful glances lest they misbehave.
I work with parents of all kinds who want to sit still and undisturbed for a few brief moments during Sunday morning’s liturgy. Sitting through an hour-long service with their children is their worst nightmare. They want their children to be cared for elsewhere while they pray, sing and listen “in peace.” This may not seem like a scandal waiting to happen; perhaps Bonhoeffer’s Ethics doesn’t cover this subject directly, perhaps this dilemma doesn’t involve sexual misconduct or gross negligence but it is a hot topic nonetheless. It is a real problem because it is on every congregant’s mind and every pastor’s list of problems to solve and if its not, it should be.
To the chagrin of many parents I argue that the invitation we extend to all God’s children must be extended to the least of these. Hirsch writes that if we want to call ourselves “Missional” we will serve everyone and share everything as the apostles did and so we must dig deep in the treasure chest of the past. Hirsch reminds us that the churches in ancient Rome were not given over to Youth Groups, or Sunday School classes aligned with Public School grouping methodology. They worshipped together and so must we. When we allow parents to protect their children from the wilds of worship, when we teach parents to protect themselves from their disruptive children we may be allowing them to treat their children and subsequently any encounter with the Shekinah as optional. When we usher our children from the worship space we are passively communicating to parents and children alike that one ought to be comfortable in order to worship.
To exile our children so that worship becomes convenient, restful and well-ordered is to deny that the glory of God is threatening to explode from within each of us. Throughout his text The Practice of Adaptive Leadership, Ronald Heifetz, et al. encouraged leaders like me to do the difficult work of discovering what is most important and this is it. And so, I am compelled by Heifetz’ argument to point out that I am passionate about the presence of children in worship. As a result, I often wonder (silently, to myself) if we are no better that the Babylonians who dashed the heads of the Hebrew children against the rocks because that is what exile can do to the children of the church.
Leadership in the church must make space for rest but we also must make space for worship—messy, dangerous, life-altering worship. We may not be able to make worship safe and comfortable, but since when is worship supposed to be safe or comfortable? Worship is always a sacrifice. The sanctuary is meant to bring us into a worshipful context. It is not meant to protect us from all harm or alarm. A child may never have to consciously confront the threat of Holy Baptism but she will have to confront death and danger. The story of the shattered font demonstrates that leaders in the church can bring entire families into the worship space in a way that prepares even the youngest hearts and minds for just such confrontations. If we do our job, the families in our care will be better prepared to recognize God the next time they come face to face with the overwhelming Shekinah.
Of course I’m not encouraging the church to expose children to unnecessary danger or disruption. I am instead insisting that church is not always safe, convenient or comfortable. Glass shatters, candles burn, wood and stone surround tender bodies. And this is precisely why we must keep our loved ones close to us. We don’t keep our children or exile our children in order to protect them. We do so to encourage them to worship and to see God’s glory in myriad forms—especially when it all seems to be exploding into countless pieces all around us.

Please Come!

2010-10-23T09:52:00.000-07:00

Free Form Open Mic
Featuring
The Poetry (and everyskinnytree) of Abigail Perez Jimenez

November 20th
8pm-?
@ MHGS
2501 Elliott Avenue
Seattle, Washington
98121

Anti empiritanical Mexicredentials notwithstanding,

2010-10-21T16:21:00.000-07:00

how do we stand?
Economically, empirically ecclesiologically?
Evidently there are lots of good ideas about sustainable living, many of which have to do with reviving the idea of a kind of victory garden. There is a new P-Patch in my neighborhood--it seems to have sprouted over night! As my Aussie friends say: Goodonya, P-Patch.

During a recent discussion regarding the "Evils of the American Empire" Such gardens were given as proof that "we" will pool our resources and learn to subvert our empirical (there wasn't a better word for the way I feel about it. I made one up: empiritanical is part empire, part puritan, part tyrannical) tendencies.

Admittedly, I am often hopeful that I belong in this "we" who "shall be saved". I am unabashedly American in so many many ways... And yet I also think of the "we" who "shall overcome" because I am Mexican. Go ahead, say it... you know you want to:

"I didn't know she was Mexican."
"Really? Like part Mexican? Or what?"
"How much Mexican blood do you have?"
"Wait, you were born here though..."
"Do you speak Spanish?"

Argue against my Mexicredentials all you want
I don't really (ever) want to engage such comments except to say this:
You want to know how Mexican I am?
I am just enough Mexican to think of Mexico first. I am Mexican first.

Sure you can tell me (one woman said it right to my face) that "Our community gardens will save us!" Go on and say it over and over again. Tell me--even though I live in an apartment now because I am losing my house and property in my divorce.
Tell me gardens are going to be our salvation--because its Wednesday, not Sunday: Wednesday is different from Sunday because Wednesday is not the day on which you corporately confess that Jesus Christ happens to be our Salvation...

Which begs the question: what exactly do you think we need salvation from? Hunger, famine, scurvy? And why do "we" need to be saved at all, isn't it that, the most empirical of our erroneous theological underpinnings, the most elitist thing we can hope for: to rescue ourselves without regard for the larger suffering? The suffering of all Creation?

And am I part of the "us" of which you speak, even after you discover my whiteness comes and goes even though it is the part that shows?

Who knows, maybe more than half of my genes are from Mexico... Those big "B"s tend to dominate. Nevertheless, all of my concern is for immigration reform... and not "immigration reform now!", but maybe even yesterday! Imagine what would happen if our national understanding about immigration reform could acknowledge the fact that the border crossed a lot of "us." All that fertile land on which your community (victory?) gardens grow may be given back to the people who lived on it first... Am I blowing your mind yet? Would you be totally effed? But Damn. Oh, wait... maybe you're not completely offended yet. That's probably good... I guess.

I'm not thinking of being saved--now that I'm $60,000 indebted to the government for loaning me the money to develop a satisfactory soteriology I don't worry about that. I worry about holding on: to the best parts of my self so I can give back, holding on to enough money (instead of saving) on groceries so I can pay rent... Are you still with me?

You can tell me what you want to do about the danger "we" are in and saving "us" but I will usually think first of Mexico and drug wars and dirty water... then I think of Mexicans like me, living on this side of the border: Third generation, accidentally accented. And our passion for those just one generation behind us: still scrimping and pinching pennies to pay for water to drink or bathe--how can anyone imagine having water with which to grow these gardens of which you speak? How can we imagine owning land or even paying rent on land enough to plant enough to feed our families? And then there is the matter of getting onto (should I say into?) this fertile land of which you speak. You don't want my family members driving through Arizona, much less crawling into California.
Are you so mad you could spit? I am, but I'm saving myself the trouble.

I sat in the meeting, one of two women of color--we were the only folks owning up to our minority status, if there were others they didn't speak up so I can't say anything about them here. The other woman, my elder and a beautiful, trustworthy woman, spoke about her concern for other countries where gardens are not the answer. And as soon as she did a white man spoke about American status and soil being ruined should our reliance on fossil fuels catch up with us. He said that soon we would all be living on barren land and soon all the white folks stateside would suffer as those in Darfur.

I asked him to reconsider that we, as privileged Americans, might offer help to countries like Darfur before that happens. I mentioned that we might not turn inward again and again but think of those less fortunate before we worry that someday we might be in their shoes.

I didn't say this at the meeting but I know that shen I am wise enough to give myself the choice I choose not to fear... I think we could quit fearing that we might suffer as they do and instead be as one with the poor and suffering, right now. If you can't suffer with, perhaps you can suffer for... and should suffering seem like a bad idea, maybe this is because you're afraid of suffering altogether... because you already know it so well. This discussion gets to be a labrynthine trek into the abundance of suffering in, around and through us, so it's probably better I quit before I got ahead of myself.

The folks who had been participating in the conversation began to treat me as the enemy. They related to me as though I were unimaginative, hopeless and fearful. They spoke to me as if to reprimand me. They told me I was uneducated and wrong.

But this is not new to me. I sat shivering in my folding chair, the way one does when one has hoped for the underdogs to be treated less like dogs and more like humans.
The hero of the night (an anglo man from the southeast: Que Milagro!) stood up and requested that the others recognize the voices of the women of color as a gift and respond with a moment of silence at least. Another white man shouted from across the room, "Oh, do you speak for them now?!"
He answered in the affirmative and then leaned down, put his hand on my back and asked if I wanted to leave and we did.
The pastor wrote to apologize.
The guest speaker contacted my best friend/white skinned, technicolor-hearted escort and relayed this story:
My people are the very reason he began working to educate folks about global economic powers and how they work against the very minorities they ought to be protecting. You see, months ago he met a child after having been told that the child needed counseling. In his professional opinion, and much to his credit, he discovered the child didn't need a therapist as much as a father. No, this father hadn't abandoned the child entirely; the father, like so many, worked two jobs to provide for the child's immediate needs: food and shelter. Look it up on Maslowe's Hierarchy if you want; that father did the right thing.

I felt better about shaking in my boots that night. There is reason to quake when a room full of white folks make accusations. I came to them to learn from them and I was deftly accused and for what? For speaking for Mexico.

And then there is this, which will be your reward if you made it this far in reading this post because it is hopeful and helpful and many more lovely things:
Today a woman stopped me on my way out of church and asked if I am okay. Now, I have many reasons to say no, but I was polite, said yes and she became suspicious. When I said yes she pressed me. She recalled the way I slipped out of the meeting I just described, and she remembered it like it was yesterday. She just wanted, she said, to be sure I was okay.
I didn't want to lie to her and I did not want to let her off the hook too easily. Whether she knew it or not she was taking the first steps toward being an advocate: she was listening.
I'm not okay, I told her. I explained that what happened in the meeting is commonplace for me these days. I am often the minority in many ways. So I'm not okay, but folks who treat me as the enemy don't have enough power over me to ruin my day--and especially not my life. I explained as well as I could and asked if I was making sense because it is still very hard for me to explain all this. She listened well and responded with acute admiration for me. She was jealous that I was able to keep from being ruined even though I was fully aware of the situation's gravitas.

So, if you're not a minority reader and you're still with me, count yourself among the advocates. You are doing it, and, as a result you will know, sooner than you would have otherwise, that it is possible to wield your opinion like an ax and waste time trying to beat the enemy down. You may unknowingly attempt to ruin someone's life and then come up empty handed and you will probably choose to quit it sooner or later than you otherwise would have because you may already be suffering a worthy suffering that makes you aware of how hard it is to be in a room with someone abusing power.

On the other hand, if you are in the minority in your community I hope this will help a little. Don't forget to look for a chance to tell the whole story, don't let the hegemony off the hook and don't forget telling the truth is a big job, pero si se puede.

In other words: P-Patches are great, but listening with the ears of love is greater still and there are more times than there aren't when that is all that matters.

Por Laurita

2010-10-19T09:44:00.000-07:00

Laurita sent me a link to this in The Atlantic... I'd copy the link, but I think you should just read it here to save time and if you need more in the way of citations, just ask...

Jackie Wang quotes The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge by Rainer Maria Rilke, on the eternal debate between being out in the world and writing about the world:

For the sake of a single poem, you must see many cities, many people and Things, you must understand animals, must feel how birds fly, and know the gesture which small flowers make when they open in the morning.

You must be able to think back to streets in unknown neighborhoods, to unexpected encounters, and to partings you had long seen coming; to days of childhood whose mystery is still unexplained, to parents whom you had to hurt when they brought in a joy and you didn’t pick it up (it was a joy meant for somebody else); to childhood illnesses that began so strangely with so many profound and difficult transformations, to days in quiet restrained rooms and to mornings by the sea, to the sea itself, to seas, but it is still not enough to be able to think of all that.

You must have memories of many nights of love, each one different from all the others, memories of women screaming in labor, and of light, pale, sleeping girls who have just given birth and are closing again. But you must also have been beside the dying, must have sat beside the dead in the room with the open windows and the scattered noises.

And it is not yet enough to have memories. You must be able to forget them when they are many, and you must have the immense patience to wait until they return. For the memories themselves are not important. Only when they have changed into our very blood, into glance and gesture, and are nameless, no longer to be distinguished from ourselves only then can it happen that in some very rare hour the first word of a poem arises in their midst and goes forth from them.

For Edgar

2010-10-04T13:23:00.000-07:00

Edgar sells Real Change (not just the papers) near my school. We recently celebrated his new reading glasses. We always celebrate his wind up radio. We drink coffee together and shared cookies on my last birthday. When I introduced him to Miss A he said to me, "you are blessed." Then he looked at her and said, "you are what its all about."
Sometimes I think I can hear him singing this song, humming right along with us.

And that's good isn't it?

2010-10-03T17:06:00.000-07:00

I edited the formatting on the old skinnytree so it won't nauseate me anymore... which means it is less likely to nauseate you too!

Also, I am not, as I thought I might be, cringing when I read the old entries.

in fact, if you're wondering what went wrong, what went right, what went down... it serves as a pretty good chronicling of the past five years. Until the new, blogger edition takes up where the blogger leaves off

http://skinnytree.berkeleyblogs.com/

In the words of one of my favorite developmentally disabled friends, "that's good, isn't it?"

even the invisible hand doesn't want to pick beans.

2010-10-02T21:57:00.000-07:00

more on santos

2010-10-02T21:40:00.000-07:00

I won't say that I figured it out, and I won't say that it was just now that I had this epiphany because I didn't figure it out.
Furthermore, this is hardly an epiphany... I think its more like clarification, or maybe confession--those are often intermingled for me.
I will just say that I lit some candles tonight, just because and I suddenly thought of a way to explain another reason why I love the Santos candles:
I don't light them because I think La Virgen de Guadalupe o Angel de la Guarda will make something good happen. That smacks of superstition and I am not optimistic enough to gamble on something like that.
I light them because its part of the routine I like to go through when I'm telling myself that its time to pay extra attention to all the good things that are happening.
I guess you could say the same about any of my prayer practices: I don't pray to ask God to make good things happen; I pray that God will help me to see the good in all that God is doing all the time and to remember that, deep down, in side where my own little light keeps shining whether or not I remember to tend the flame there.

think of it

2010-09-30T18:41:00.001-07:00

this way,
when I can't think of the right thing to say
you have space;
think your own thoughts.

I knew. I know.

2010-09-06T21:57:00.000-07:00

He had never learned about wind. The wind itself almost carried the question away. And so, in earnest, he wondered aloud.
“Where does wind come from?” It was like a gull against the breeze, or like a seed with wings and it landed at my feet, hoping for a crumb or at least, hoping to be spared the boot.
I knew. I know.
I know where wind comes from. I know about rotating planets, ocean currents, molecular movements, atmospheric pressure and barometers. Don’t ask how or where I learned; I can’t tell you. So I had a choice to make. Either let him in on the secrets of meteorology, or leave him alone to imagine. Instead of choosing one or the other I chose a path right through the deepest waters of his question.
“Lots of molecules moving at once.” I tried to say it the way I offer a reassuring comment, as though to second his amazement because, well, wind is amazing, whether or not you know what makes it. It was such a tender moment and had I not participated as he noticed the wind and the grandeur of creation, the teachable moment would have been lost. The gull would have flapped away; the seed would have been crushed under my foot.
He hadn’t imagined I would know. Now that I did know, he seemed to feel safer asking more question. Nestled in the following conversation were two seemingly common queries that belied his beloved bewilderment: “What do you mean? You know? How?”

Nevermind how hard I studied in grammar school. Disregard the months of preparation for my California teacher credentialing exams. The best teachers know in the core of their being that the states of matter don’t matter in moments like this. The best teachers remember that if I speak without love I am just a noisy gong. So we exercise the muscles of our awareness, we memorize facts and proverbs, all the while remembering that we too have fragile questions and that teachable moments must be handled with care.
To know me is to know that although I truly enjoy reliable answers to my questions and participate in modernity’s love affair with empirical data, I much prefer imagination to factoids. In a matter of seconds I run through a checklist in my head whenever a question like this is laid at my feet. I ask myself does the query matter to me? How? Why? Why not? But mostly, finally, fundamentally, I wonder how I can foster a love for creativity, imagination alongside the desire for knowledge? In other words, I wonder how can I use any question to deepen faith in all the things that make up a whole life.
I don’t want to offer facts alone, as though they were all we ought to try to believe. I don’t want to neglect facts or scientific method, as though they don’t matter at all. I want to use what I know of the world and the way life works as a spring board so we can jump together into what we don’t know. And I want to do so in a way that communicates my own curiosity and doubt.

It doesn’t always work out. My attempts to co-construct knowledge misfire if a more solid answer is needed. A child continues to pursue the adult asking, “but why?” until she is satisfied. Adults tend to quit vocalizing quandary while they’re ahead: hm hmmming along with the explanation even if they are lost early on—but then keep wondering, searching or feeling frustration for hours, days, years...
But this time it worked. I took a small stick of driftwood and drew the Earth in the sand, I blew the grains across it as if they were molecules of oxygen, nitrogen and hydrogen. He said, “wow.” I said, “yeah, wow, right?” Even as I explained I thought of holes in the plot of the story of a breeze. I found myself asking questions too. I explained that I don’t know whether this breeze is because of the water or the hills or both. We wondered aloud together and then imagined these molecules had once flown over Argentina or been puffed out of a whale’s spout in the Atlantic Ocean.
And then it kept working.
Months later (many moons and traumas later) I heard him pose the question to a friend. This time it was with wonder and awe that he posed almost the exact same question: “Do you know where wind comes from?!” It was a shining moment for this self-designated teacher, preacher and poet. I caught his eye as I overheard him in conversation and we smiled at one another. It was as if he were about to describe a gift he’d been given or a story he’d read recently. He was honestly posing the question out of his hope for more knowledge, even though he knew more about the topic now than he ever had before. There was a tiny twist of pride in his voice, but not enough to stifle the curiosity of the person he asked. So it was.
Those who know me have heard me tell stories like this about my students ad nauseum but this one is especially important to me because it is not about answering a child’s question. It is about a grown man--a powerful, business suit wearing, beard-growing, bill-paying grown up. Somehow he managed to access wonder, awe, imagination in spite of all the chaos of his childhood reverberating in his heart, the aches in his overworked muscles and the daily stressors of adult responsibilities. But it is the perfect example of imagination at work and it goads me on in hopes that it is possible for adults to learn to imagine faithfully and to pass it on…

potent

2010-08-16T09:51:00.000-07:00

For the sake of balance I am putting this here.
See, Jackson and I have a real problem with the idea of potential because it creates such a pressure and has such a cold front that nothing but a hurricane of emotions is sure to come of it. And then there are also people who use that word with such aplomb, like a giant Eff You to the pressure to be more than I have to be.
Vicki is one of those.

I started writing about all that confusion and it turned out so, well, helpful I just couldn't keep it from you.

We have such big plans these days... to bear such good fruit. Growing branches strong enough is tricky but not impossible thanks to folks like Vicki.

Potent
For Vicki

Her hands clench air near her heart
Like claws wrenching flesh from bone
To show me how this unraveling takes time.
It is as though her fingers are working
One strand of each:
Hope into past.

The things to recover from are still piling up
All around us even as she says
You would let them build with blocks,
Talk to them, teach them and listen.

She talked of my potential as though it
Were my best friend
And the future
Is someone to meet for coffee
I imagined I could chat and reminisce with whoever
I want
to be,
Who I am going to be
When all this unravels and I
Go along with it.

how to

2010-08-04T17:50:00.000-07:00

There is this awful thing we did when I was growing up in daycares. It went like this:
"She hit me!"
"Say you're sorry."
"I'm sorry."
"It's okay."
There were usually three people involved. You might be thinking an adult always proctored the exchange, but that was not always the case as I remember it.
These days, in the places I work, it goes more like this:
"She smashed me."
"Are you all right?"
"She smashed me."
"Let's go talk to her."
"Did you mean to smash her?"
"Yeah, she wouldn't move when I asked her to."
"Oh, I see. When someone is in our way, we try to use our words first. So that was right. But the hard part is to go slowly and to be patient with our friends when they don't do what we asked. Look, at her face. It's telling me she is still hurting from when you smashed her body. When you're ready to go slow again you can come back out and play with her. You might even get ready to say you're sorry. But come sit with me for a few minutes to rest your body and give yourself a time out. You can tell me a story while you rest. I'd like that."

Sometimes the offender does apologize, sometimes she doesn't. When she does her friend just thanks her for apologizing, rather than giving her the vague ol' "it's okay" routine. If you have more questions about how and why it "works", when to use it, or what to do when it doesn't work just let me know.
Grownups often insert their sense of deeper injustice into situations like these, and then compensate by oversimplifying the dialogue because they've given up on confession, repentance, and much of reconciliation on a deeper level anyway.

At my house, we've been talking about being pastoral toward people we really can't handle.
We say things like, "How would you be pastoral with him?" or "I don't think I can be her friend, but I can be pastoral... right?" or "What would it take to be pastoral in this situation?"(I know there is a good chance this kind of dialogue annoys you, but we can't get enough... call it cheese ball heaven, living in fantasy, or a downright misrepresentation of dinner table conversation, but we chalk it up to a love of vocation and a return on our investment in seminary and therapy.)

And most of the time you can substitute the word compassion or even the word human for the word pastoral. I don't know that I'd advise the feint of heart to try it out... but if you're up for a little growing up then I'd say, go for it with gusto.

The real hard part is that you can't just dabble in being compassionate, human or pastoral. You've got to go big or go home when it comes to being anything (yeah, the scent of college football season is in the air--even the skinnytree abides the first day of practice). Being is a big job. You might think you could go around just sort of being, but then you start to simply do stuff, instead of really being. And, I know you're about to get lost in the philosophy-ish tone of this post, but hold on!
Insert some adjectives if you want, they may help. Try this on "You might think you could go around just sort of being, but then you start to simply do stuff, instead of really being... being anything compassionate, angry, eccentric, ________... You fill in the blank.

I don't want to mess with your interpretation of these thoughts too much so take a little break, reread that last paragraph and then read this:

I think I'm finding out that if I try to do too much stuff, I can't be anything really good. If I try to do something compassionate about a problem or person its a sort of one time deal (sure I did something--one thing--compassionate or maybe compassionately but then I find it that much harder to really be compassionate which is to have compassionate thoughts and feelings because I was too busy acting the part out there instead of in my head, in my heart.

Apologizing and receiving an apology well are the rocket science behind compassion because they are all about changing, choosing, curiosity and they allow us to rewrite the script and the story.

So here is the open letter to the folks who I'm struggling with and for.

Dear _________,
I know you* treated me like junk because people often treat you like junk.
I know I have treated you like junk too. But I really regret the nasty things I said and thought about you. And I hope it will ease your pain to know that I see how I'm hurting you and you're hurting me in return is a very understandable and human reaction.
I won't be returning to our friendship until we can get this straightened out and writing is the best way for me to do that. And even when we reconcile things will be very different. This is scary for me and I am pretty confused by my feelings, which are very strong these days.
So send word if you want because sometimes when I stop talking and writing folks they tell their friends and family I'm giving them the "silent treatment." But in my head and heart I'm just trying really hard to shut up and listen well. I'm trying to talk to myself about all that went down between us so that I won't be exposing you to more words that could cause more confusion for either of us. I figure you'll either get to a place where you are ready to say the things I need to hear. When you're ready to repent or confess or apologize, in your own way and time too I'll be all ears, I promise. And we can go from there.
Thanks,
Abigail
*Notice I didn't say, "you only treated me like shit the other day..." I do speak that way sometimes. But only when I'm scared. I'm trying to cut back and anyway to use a minimizing word would undermine the power of the shitty treatment, and offer them excuses for inexcusable behavior and neither of those is what I am trying to write about.

And then I guess I go on from there. Depression is real and comes in various stages and strengths so I'm not pretending that a letter like this won't bring it on or be cause to work harder to fend it off.
I either get on the Feelings Schedule (I'll re post it underneath to refresh your memory) and work on myself or I won't. But if I don't then I'm breaking the promise I made and that sucks for me and the offender. In fact, I don't know what I'd do if one of you just copied and pasted the letter in an email and sent it to me. I hope I'd be able to respond right away by thinking through what I am ready to confess to you, figure that out, write an honest email that says, "I'm ready to repent." And nothing else: no excuses, no reactions, no withholding behaviors, no drama or hyperbole. But that may take me a long time.
Just to put it in perspective: It has been a year since my husband of almost 7 years and I split. And though there has been healing this year I am nowhere near knowing what to confess, how to repent, or what reconciliation will mean for us.
You can go on and say the letter is controlling or manipulative or rude. You can criticize it all you want but maybe you just don't like it for the same reasons I have never written it down before today: it is a lot to deal with... and rightly so! When we hurt people there is no easy, right or graceful way out. You have to go deeper in, you have to risk, trust, slow down, be awkward and its going to hurt. It might even get messier than it already was. But not the destructive, chaotic kind of mess, more like the sewing room, the craft shack, the workbench or the potting shed.
And it is growth, creation and so it takes time.
Jackson says she and I will be friends for the rest of our lives and so I am constantly reminded that grace can be spread out over a long period of time. She refers to the way we'll have the rest of our lives to watch reruns, but it also reminds me that I will have the rest of my life to learn to be a good friend.

I guess I spend a lot of time hoping that the things I regret and want to change would match up with whatever offense hurting friends have located. Often it doesn't and won't.
For example, I've been accused of being a bitch and that is just too vague so I can't apologize for that. I've also been accused of being mean, which I most certainly am, and more than I should be, but I can't apologize for that either because its too big a part of my story... I'd need a more direct and caring call to repentance. I'd need someone to brave the windstorm of my insecurities, look at me and carefully, slowly (as should have been done when we were children) say, "You have hurt someone you love. You don't have to do something right now, but you have a choice. You can choose compassion. There is no need to be ashamed or afraid. But there is a need for you to be aware of your impact on the people around you. Practice compassion in a safe place and when you're ready to risk bigger, to be curious and forgiving, you can be compassionate with yourself and everyone else in ways you have neglected today."

I've been accused (quite recently, and harshly) of dishonesty, infidelity,unchristian behavior, chicanery, abandonment, distrusting, antisocial behavior, passing judgment, insanity, stupidity and narcissism. I've been told that therapy, marriage, a certain book, a certain spiritual practice, a better outlook on life, or a change in habits or friends would force me to change my behavior, then I'd be a better person, then I'd be worthy of forgiveness, then I'd be worthy of friendship or trust or generosity or... compassion.

I will admit it probably works that way for some people sometimes, and I will admit that if it worked that way for me, if that were good enough for me, I'd be easier to live with already!

But! I am human which means two things: 1)I'll never be able to earn your esteem, 2)I'm a part of creation and that is enough to make me worthy of compassion--even yours.

Although I am honest, faithful, willing to believe in God's goodness, generous, loyal, trusting, social, justified, sane, intelligent and self-aware when it is safe for me to be so, I cannot act in all those ways all the time--no one can. Therefore I cannot do anything to change myself so much that I would someday earn your friendship.
And what is more, I am trying real hard to stop expecting you to, too... I'm trying to stop expecting so that I can live in the grace of curiosity over the particulars as to why it is so hard for the president, the mothers, the bothers, the congressmen, flight attendants, baristas, publishers--everyone from St. Peter on down to the neighbor kids to be more of who we were made to be.

As promised: You might need this later because you probably have regrets or repentance to deal with... or maybe just because you're human.

The Feeling Schedule is a little poem I wrote last summer it is actually called

Today

Wake up
Stare at the ceiling
Refuse to get out of bed
Think of the things that make you feel
overwhelmed, angry, hateful, sad, depressive
count to ten, slowly
Roll over, yes you have to.
Think of all that you don’t have and feel pretty shitty, count to ten, or maybe twenty
But you can’t stay there
There are birds learning to fly just outside

Push away the mattress, slide out from between a blanket or sheet, stand up as tall as
you can
Lift your head, yes you have to.
Think of the people that make you feel
Loved, angry, loved, angry, loved…

Eat breakfast, watch television, pull on some clothes, socks, a hat maybe, yes you have to
Feel the soft clothes against you
Don’t worry about what it smells like, looks like or
the way they mock the shape of you and the shape the day will take.

The day is hot and wet, give in to the sweat and feel the knot in your stomach, or throat
Think of all that grows here: trees, boys, and clouds that refuse to gather and
Tell yourself that is good

And when the anxiety comes
When the hatred and fear swell like a tsunami
When the nausea and sickness threaten to engulf you

Try them on,
think of wind and rainstorms inside your body,
thunder and lightening in your veins
Think of boys racing down the slight sloped hill on skateboards
girls hoping you will call and lots of lost love
Try to think of mothers screaming in the throes of birthing pains and
Little boys with fat tears falling on scraped knees
Think of bandaids generous enough to cover new wounds
And scars covering old wounds
&
when you are alone again,
Hiding in a public bathroom stall, against the wall holding you vertical
Or in the car, put on your seat belt and let it press into your chest
Like the hand of God pressing against your lungs
so all you can do is
Stay right there
Slump down, against a wall or window and
put your hand On your head,
cover your face and cry. Let the sadness and frustration and grief
shake your shoulders, shake itself out.

The hot tears are sticky and ooze out and you have to let them out
Let them out, spit them off your lips, blow them out your nose,
Push them out, not in
Wipe them on your shirtsleeve like snail trails,
So you can see the tracks of slow moving sadness

Breathe in and out
Breathe in and out like a dog panting in the heat of your emotions
Open your mouth and lungs
and the ache will either get worse
or dissipate

If it gets worse, stay a little (one) longer, wipe away a few more tears

If it goes away, and trust me, that ache will go away eventually,
If you respect it,
Then you can go on.
&
At the end of the day when you crawl back into the bed
Just lie still
Scrunch up your nose at the stench of wrongdoing all around you
Clench your jaw and steel yourself against the nightmare you are living.
Think back on the day, the downward spiral you are riding
Jokes and drunks and all
And imagine what you would tell the one person you want to talk to most

That this is bad
this is not good
That you are so lonely and you don’t know what you are doing here and
Why did your mother fail and your father get you into this mess?

Imagine the face of a friend, tearing up, eye lashes sticking together and nose running
For you
All for you, over you, all around you

Wrap the blankets around you tight and think of the warm bodies of close friends
Next to you
On a porch, on a bench, on a beach, on the hood of a car, on a diner booth bench,
on a bar stool, on a couch,
on a hopeful day
&
think of how hard it is
to loose your innocence over again, just when you thought
you didn’t have any more innocence left to lose

think of a carpenters’ roof beams raised high above your head and let your soul lay across

think of the ancient Egyptian pylons and let self and body stand tall between them

think of Grecian columns, slant 6 engines, old growth redwoods, and tug boats
because you are stronger now and you are taking your place among them
whenever you feel this way
whenever you feel
whenever
you feel
this way
everyday.

for Cristy whose maiden name matters.

2010-07-23T21:30:00.001-07:00

My new best friend, Mrs Madeleine L’Engle, has quite an interest in science and temper tantrums and theology (She’s the one who wrote A Wrinkle in Time, which we told you about today)… I read this quote today, only a few hours after hearing about your struggle against putting plow to earth, telling your best friends that their opinion isn’t God, and deciding whether to put your own story in its proper place in the order of things so that you can be healthy and whole…
so I thought this might be helpful to you… and lots of other friends of the skinnytree who are going through similar ordeals over ideals:
“In a world where fewer and fewer people believe in God at all, where life is for so many an unimportant accident with no meaning, where we are born only to slip back into annihilation, we need to stop arguing [even with ourselves and our deepest desires] and affirm the goodness of creation, and the power of love which holds us all. As far as the evidence of science shows today (and the evidence of science is always open to change with new discoveries), evolution [or perhaps the science behind nutrition and psychiatry] seems a likely explanation… If new evidence should prove that evolution [or Bastyr or MHGS] is not how it all happened [or should happen] that won’t do anything to change the nature of God, any more than Galileo’s discoveries changed the nature of God. Nor would it shatter my faith. …Not only are stars and people and fireflies born, not only do they die, but what we as creatures do during our life span makes a difference. We are not just passive, acted upon; we are also actors in the great drama of creation. …God urges us to be willing to change, to go out into the wilderness, to wrestle with angels, to take off our shoes when we step on holy ground. And to listen. God asks us to listen, even when what el [sic] asks of us seems most outrageous.”
So…(sigh) there it is, as I see it.
Or maybe: You want to point at those meanies that criticize you for taking such risks and say it: “So there!” But probably its best to do that quietly, to yourself for now: revenge can be sweet but often requires that you make an ugly face… and there is no need for them to see your gentle smile so contorted. Besides, the mothers and aunties are always telling you, “you keep making that ugly face it just might get stuck like that.” And I think that is probably one of the truer things in life.

But it is true also that:
You (all of you!) are very much inclined to change, even created to change, to evolve, to grow, to be an actor in the drama of creation. Science will only validate this over and over… just as surely as your story will, my dear.

And I am so pleased to hear that you are
That you are that…
You are!

And then there is the old Avett Bros bit about “when you run make sure you run to something and not away from, lies don’t need an aeroplane to chase you anywhere.” Don’t worry about the running from… sometimes it is okay to run toward safety (which I am finding does require a certain abrupt leaving which can often look like “running away" while it is yet simply a running from), toward what it best for you. When they try to tell you that you are wrong to dream a big dream and follow it, it is a lie and lies like that will always follow you, but they are still just lies. Maybe that isn’t what the song is about, but that is often what it makes me think about, and that matters too.

One more thing for you who are so easily judged because you don’t try as hard as they want you to:
Firstly, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again and again until you have all looked into it: sometimes trying harder is simply not the answer
Secondly, my new discovery is that the folks who are judging you for doing whatever it is you need to do today were always slated to judge you at some point in your life… You can’t make them love you more, you can’t change their opinion about you… you can only change your mind about the value of their remarks—and you may find that in the end you love them more as a result of this change in yourself.

I know the grammar of this post makes it a bit awkward but I simply had to rush it because, well, I can't let perfectionist tendencies run our lives... So go back and reread if you have time, or go with what you got the first time--that may very well be all you need for now.

usually hate

2010-06-09T12:30:00.000-07:00

Transition is like a trek into a wilderness. It seems equilibrium, balance, and pattern are all in question. This wandering is foolishness. What kind of a leader abandons the post and moves into the woods, away from the people she came to serve? There isn’t much to do out here but pay attention to myself and those who are willing to risk a visit. It is a frightening negotiation to pay such attention to myself, to raise the drawbridge against the onslaught of opinions and feelings in order to protect those sequestered close to me.
My friend Donna says that when you stop trying to win the fight by getting big, you can actually shrink your ego, dig a hole, climb out from under the fence and be on your way… away from the things that kept you penned in and scared. Care of the soul is such an important part of ministry, but who will care for mine? I suppose only I will be able to do that. I only wish it didn’t seem like I was doing it at the expense of caring for the souls of others.
So that is where frustration hardens into hatred, for myself as I seem to be running like a bandit from the scene of the crime, and for others who would cover me.
I usually hate (I was going to keep going with that sentence but maybe it should stop there for a moment and rest).

I usually hate.

But its time for something different and this is how I can tell.
There is this book.
It’s the kind I usually hate because of its polished look, bible bookstore styling and cloying, inefficient title. Not to mention the lengthy forward, far-reaching preachy “Praise for…” page, and prescriptive subheadings—even the title has one (apparently six words wasn’t enough)! But I also worry because it was written by someone who used to work for Willow Creek Community Church and still claims her work there in her author’s bio, like it’s a huge accomplishment, when really, I find it to be more like a warning. See, plenty of reasons to hate it, right? Of course. But I don’t.
Turns out you can’t judge a book by its cover… or by its title, subheadings, references, its author’s so-called credentials, or awful serif!
Turns out there are lots of good ideas in this book. Ideas about wilderness that came at just the right time for a lot of people I know and love, but especially me. Try this on: “Just as the physical law of gravity ensures that sediment swirling in a jar of muddy river water will eventually settle and the water will become clear, so the spiritual law of gravity ensures that the chaos of the human soul will settle if it sits still long enough.” Or this: “Some of us will wear ourselves out trying to change ourselves before we realize that it is not about fixing; it is about letting go—letting go of old patterns that no longer serve us.”
I freaked out yesterday. It was lunch time, which is such a wicked time for the unemployed. You know how Carson McCullers wrote in The Heart is a Lonely Hunter that 3 o’ clock is the worst time of day or night? Well, I think she must have been employed when she wrote that because clearly, were she unemployed she would have realized that lunchtime can happen at 3! So I think, logically, we should go with lunchtime, don’t you agree? Anyway, I am Hispanic and always have been, so it seems strange that I would burn myself making a quesadilla. But I did. And I blame it on Lunchtime being such an awful time to be cooking. I began cursing, and swearing (yes, they are two different things when I do them) and I accidentally turned the whole kitchen into quesadilla. Not a very domesticated way to do things, I know, because if there is one thing I know for sure: I am the kind of woman who is willing to entertain the notion that I am better behind at typing than making lunches.
I burned my arm. It’s going to leave a mark. I’ll have this scar for a while. A pink mark, in the spot where my friends have tattoos, I have this reminder that the skin I’m in is fragile.
I have such self-loathing when I end up acting like a real domestic. For example the laundry piles up and I consider it evidence that I must be getting the writing done instead of the wash. When I’m in a good mood that means I am busy doing important things; when I’m in a bad mood that means I’m busy with trivial things. I hate it piling, but I really don’t appreciate doing the laundry alone these days. It just seems so responsible of me, and that seems disingenuous. I do like going to the Laundromat, I like the smell of clean laundry, I like the sorting and folding but this week I feel like it’s too house-wifeish a task for someone like me.
This shouldn’t bother me because I have such respect for women who run the household while the men are behind desks or hammers. These brave women are the domestic technicians, efficiency experts and nurturing whizzes. I admire their ability to self-motivate, micromanage or see the big picture and then conduct with aplomb the speeding bullet train of family life. I am not angry with them for doing all these things with such grace and dignity, I just get angry with myself for participating as though I know how to do these things—as though I am one of them. It feels like such fakery.
I hate how I must have been such a let-down as a domestic partner. How I missed the mark because I couldn’t pull it all off perfectly anymore. Moreover, I hate that I tried so hard. and I hate knowing that, in the end, I handed over the housekey, even though I’ll be responsible for the mortgage if something goes wrong. What is more I’ll be paying for that house and all that went on inside of it (and inside of me when I was there) for many years. And it is now impossible to go to the office and hide behind work.
So Laurita has come in and saved me once again. Even though she is all the way out in Gulu learning about reconciliation between murderers and rape victims she is unabashed to reconcile me to myself when I just don't know what to do about this new rhythm of life. I feel a little lazy for not working but so exhausted by the idea of working because I have so much to do that has nothing to do with parish ministry and even less to do with house keeping. In fact, the things I have to do have more to do with cleaning out my little brain, rather than the kitchen sink or organizing my gentler thoughts instead of organizing Sunday school volunteers.
I know this is getting a little sickening but don’t you dare stop reading now because I’m trying to tell you something really important: I’m trying to tell you that it is okay to take some time to think this sort of thing. In fact its so important that if you don’t stop and think about why you hate what you hate or love what you love you’ll go crazy. Or you’ll have to quit your job too. You won’t be you if you don’t take time to think about yourself, for yourself, in between driving your kids (either in the car or crazy), reading theological texts (Calvin! Hobbes! Even Calvin and Hobbes), paying rent, convincing your boss to give you a raise so you can pay your rent, shaving your armpits, flossing your teeth, planting perennials and rearranging furniture. Find time, make time and do it goddamnit.
So here is what Laurita and I came up with: Grace.
But not your average, cheap, two for a dollar, gravelly turn-out, moss-covered, pasteurized prepared cheese product grace. She has it figured out like there is a certain kind of grace offered to renegade women like us who don’t have a soul connection to what composes everybody’s everyday dishes and wishes and washing. What I mean is that there are plenty of women out there who found a way to see the divine in doing the chores—I’m just not there yet.
And I will never get there by forcing myself.
Laurita said to tie on a bandanna and consider myself a kind of renegade partner… you know, more like somebody who’d ride the dusty trail with you, cook over an open flame and risk the burn. We are the grace-rustling, hope-hustling, grin-toting few and we’ve been riding all day. We’re more likely to break the dishes than wash them, tickle the babies or encourage them to wail it out—this life is rough! We’re prone to running after buses, pouring cocktails out on mean men, and, well, we dance like we mean it and don’t care who knows it. We even stop them dead in their tracks. We even stop ourselves as we ramble on… we brake mid-sentence and decide to shut up, whenever we tire of nagging our partners, or over-explaining things to little ones. We are the William Wallaces of womanhood, making ourselves up with blusher and mascara like war-paint, embellishing, but never covering up these good eyes God granted, with which we survey the terrain and spot the target of our affection. We raise our fists and spears and then we wisely shout, “Hold!” And we know this requires its own brand of wisdom and grace.
So we offer ourselves grace, the expensive kind, that is so hard to find. And lots of it. I’m sure it’s the same quality of grace that the classic forms of wifehood and motherhood require, because it comes from the same source. It is the grace that we know as a result of giving in to what we have discerned to best for ourselves and those we love, right now.
And that means I’m holding, still, and in a way I never have been before: the way a woman knows how to wait and watch even when there are dirty dishes in the sink and dust on the window ledge. So thank you to Ruth Haley Barton. I’m sorry I judged you so harshly at first but you won me over because you seem to be one of us. If you don’t want to be associated with us I apologize. And for superimposing the image of renegade, I apologize—I may have misread your pages. But I will say this: ever since you nearly crashed into a fellow employee as you ran down the office hall, cell phone stuck to your ear, checking on your sick child as you rush toward a meeting—ever since that is what it took to make you realize the importance of holding still—you are one of us. So welcome: welcome to my affection and admiration, welcome to the renegade band.

is this a... what day is this?

2010-06-05T09:20:00.000-07:00

i have a habit of falling asleep to the The Big Lebowski... the morning afters are one of the best reasons for why I do this. See, my computer allows me to clap it shut and fall asleep so
when I wake up and open it in the morning the movie starts playing again. Its like a jump start to the day without all the commitment of taking a shower.
So this morning I woke up, made coffee while I did the dishes and sat down to get some writing done only to open my computer and there he was
Jeff Bridges, The Dude, His Dudeness, dressed in an old hoodie, shorts, dirty white V neck and jelly shoes. He is seated on the receiving end of a giant, antique, F*&# you! desk and he leans in to address well, me, I guess and says, "Employed?" and laughs. The fat, white suit on the other side of the desk lectures him about going out on a weekday to look for a job, dressed like that and the Dude answers, "Is this a... what day is this?"

yeah, I am living the dream.

fame?, us?, here?

2010-06-03T12:46:00.000-07:00

I think I like the idea that you can google "liturgy locatedness" and the skinnytree appears as an option. So you don't have to go back to the old skinnytree, which is formatted all crazy now, I'm re-posting this here, where it is exponentially easier to view.
But that isn't the only reason for re-posting and re-reading. There is also this: Laurita Mia is so far away and I'm really trying hard not to worry about her. I keep asking myself, "Why does she have to go all the way to Uganda? Why there? and so it has been comforting to re read my own answer to the location question... you know, it keeps my hypocritical tendencies under control.

so, without further ado...

A Strategy for Local Theology

But why here?
I’m going to plant a tree here. I live here, I work here and though I know the soil in California better than I know the soil here, though I respect the California native Banana slugs, though I have delighted in Californian riparian woodlands encroaching or shading over Bouganveillias in my home town, though I was willing to fight back the blackberries and Vinca Minor there in ways I have been unwilling to do so here, I am beginning to trust the way the rain will come when Seattle grass begins to brown and cedars go to seed. This is where I am right now, and I know trees will grow here.
So I’m going to plant a tree. Here.
The theology that is just a branch, just the beginning of an idea, I clipped from another time and another place is ready to put down roots. My ideas about God and God’s people are ready to be grounded in this location. My theology is daily changing and being changed by the people and problems of this time and place. It seems to me that my little branch of theology needs the nourishment offered by questions posed here and now.
I will have to dig a hole for my little tree, the way they dig for a building’s foundation: find a spot and dig deeper than anyone expected. Maybe even put up a temporary barrier to protect the hole, and those who come around to look down in it. On the friendlier days we have talked to each other. They usually ask, “why are you doing this in Seattle? What was wrong with California—you know people there.”
And I respond as transparently as I can, “I just fit in better here. I am more readily accepted here. They understand my love of children and are more community oriented. They are like a city but also like a small town. I think it is a good place to try new things. It is good for me to be rained on and greyed in and I am learning to appreciate sun, the water and the trees in new ways. I think I could be here a good long time. Besides, it wasn’t until I got here that I decided to stop wandering around and put down roots and there is no way of knowing exactly when and where to start digging—sometimes you just have to start.”
“How long do you think you will be in Seattle? Would you ever go back to California?”
“Sure, I would. But I want to put down roots so badly and this is where I am right now. I want to invest here, to reach down and grab up and give back in this place and the only way to do that is to be here now, fearlessly and graciously. I want to contribute, to say something meaningful and that won’t happen unless I discover the local currency. I don’t worry about getting out or back to Cali, this is good soil.”
So I resume digging. I dig a deep hole and sort out the rocks of hardened hearts from the fertile soil, dark with nourishing elements like curiosity and mystery. I never had to do that in California; I wasn’t ready to do the work of local theology there. Now I look down, bow down, to the differences, respect them enough to sort them, carefully and with love. I will have to or my theology will never put roots down deep enough. I decide which of the hard parts and hardened hearts to deal with now or leave in place knowing that the roots of my local theology will navigate around them.
I get down on my hands and knees, not with a shovel, but with my fingers and tenderly grapple with the hard parts of the people close to me. I know some of the fears and habits of the local people: the way they are afraid to tell their children “no”, wonder what will happen if they don’t recycle every can and bottle. I see the way their hearts and money are spent on their dogs and boats and second homes in Island County. These, the stony bits mixed in with the fertile soil, are not a loss, but neither are they to be ignored. They must be turned over and looked under. I will have to make judgments about those hard hearts and stony faces I am sorting through, I will have to take them into consideration as I plan to set a theology into this place. I will mourn, surely, if I can’t find their beauty. Sometimes it seems there are more rocks than soil but those times are so far few and far between.

The question of water and wind
This place and these people affect the growth of my theology. This place invites me to relinquish all that I know about God to the holy water and spirit wind here. I set it down and let weather, neighbors, dogs, babies and music come close to what I have hoarded so boldly. When it is time, I search out the right tree and get it in the soil. I know a lot about trees, and yet, it will never be enough because it is impossible for me to understand all the ways each branch interacts with the elements in this location. There is no formula to determine how the leaf buds shudder in the ruach of the local wind, or roots will soak in the waters from the local font.
I recently heard a story of a church that unearthed a giant baptismal font during renovation. The day of their first post-renovation worship service they baptized babies in that antique font but because it wouldn’t fit in the newly renovated sanctuary, they lugged it out onto the sidewalk and did the liturgy there. I want to ask the pastor of this Capitol Hill congregation how this reveals his theology of baptism that allows for naked babies to be dipped in a giant font on a busy sidewalk.
As for the congregation I serve, we have a small bowl-like font, a smallish metal trough and a giant, coffin-sized trough. They are all three employed with equal fervor and regularity. We exchange stories of our interactions with the font on a pretty regular basis. I like to tell a story of the night I tripped and nearly fell face first into the small, waist-high bowl. I heard one recently about two sixth graders washing their faces in it. The font is central to our theology, but also to our daily lives.
We all have stories about it interrupting our routines and tempting our children, calling them to dip a finger in and then lick it off, just to see if baptism tastes like they remember. The taller kids walk by and put a whole hand in, just to check if it might be good for swimming in, and then wipe the water all over their best dresses, their hair, or their baby brother. Parents hold their four year olds over it so they can stare down into it, hoping to glimpse fish or pennies or God. I have never seen any of these behaviors in other churches. I have never before seen theology worked out like this, around a font so tempting and present because of its location, its place, its central role among us.
Recently, I asked my pastor if I could use the giant font for a Vacation Bible School game. We both considered how this would affect the adults and children in our care. The children are ever increasingly familiar with the font. They have played in it before—during baptismal liturgies younger siblings often spend so much time enjoying the water that the whole family ends up soaked. But do they see an affirmation of baptism in the precious asperges as a soaked big sister runs to embrace a grandfather who flew in from Florida to attend? What would happen to their idea of baptismal sacrament were the font carried carefully onto the front lawn and filled with fully dressed children soaking, wiggling and cheering for their friends to run to the waters, and jump in? What kind of water is in this trough, in this place, that calls theology to be informed or adapted be a scene like this?

A sort of arborist
If we understand that theology comes to us locked in a seed, only to peek out after a blazing wildfire, we understand what growth will cost, how much energy it takes to respond to a harsh environment in constructive ways, what we must do to harden the outer bark just enough to protect xylem and phloem, veins and structures. I have landed in this place, these fonts, these winds, which will beat against my theology and I must let it happen.
Theologically grows stronger if I let the voices I know, both near and far ask questions about the varied fonts and Spirit they know personally. I become a sort of arborist, reading the details of the lives in my care, watching how the differing theologies grow near to each other or far apart and why. I look for signs of health, growth, disease or decay.
Theology grows, moves and gathers strength from the winds of change. It either shelters kindly or crashes down through the roof of the house if the roots are too shallow. Theology has branches and little bits at the tips that fall away at the end of the growing season. Theology bears sexy little blossoms, which wait patiently for the breeze and bees to disseminate its tiny totality.
If we learn to appreciate the variety of theologies like we appreciate the power of the seasons in a forest ecosystem, we will be better prepared to acknowledge substantial theological hardship as it comes and goes. We will see that certain trees suffocate in certain climates and dominate in others because of wind and water. Theology is the same way and happens according to the smallest components connecting, gathering fodder, and gaining strength by standing against indeterminate forces.
The problem with trees, is the same problem with theology: transplanting is difficult and not always in everyone’s best interest. Of course seeds transport well, with or without a human to carry them, seeds are fragile and hopeful but they are not the whole. The whole tree, the whole theology will not do well if it is dug up and moved too far and left alone. So it is best to prepare realistically and imaginatively, or come humbly with the seeds of a local theology and hold them loosely knowing that they are to be scattered and may not survive.
One part tree hugger and one part theologian, I am predisposed to the task of planting in the best of conditions, and nourishing the seedlings of theology, all the while knowing that I don’t have any say really in how well a thing will grow. Trinitarian theology grows best in conditions of heightened community. Rupture, and repair are to theology, as they are to the bark of a tree, evidence of growth. They are evidence that we are in the presence of salvific community, that we are gaining, changing, responding to outside forces like water and wind, that call us to be more ourselves, to put down deeper roots (reaching into the dark and unknown) and risk putting forth tender leaves and blossoms. There are choices to be made and freedoms to be exercised in order to grow a local theology. Doing local theology means extending roots and branches fully into the spaces we perceive between our location and God’s. It is in this reaching that we find how close God is.

One tree or one branch
I know that in the process of doing local theology there will be erosion of the soil, bending of the trunk, pruning of branches and grief when an old growth theology falls hard. It is hard to determine if local theology is just one tree in a forest of theologies: biblical, covenantal, feminist, reformed, Muslim, etc. Perhaps these are just branches of one system. Either way, they work together, live together, move in the same wind and grow in the same sun, from the same soil.
There are certain things I do, as a budding theologian, that are part of formulating and living a theology that is self-aware, taking into consideration my locatedness, vocation, gifts and struggles. My coworkers help me to see how my style of relating informs the relationships that affect my theology most. Recently, a coworker’s wife shared with me her husband reports back to her when our pastor/boss and I occasionally experience mismeeting. He tells her these stories because it is in my struggle to be understood by other theologians that he recognizes his own.
For example, I have both loved and hated our weekly staff meetings because I am often invited to share my perspective. My perspective on ministry is colored by my expectations that I will work against oppression; that others will work against oppression; to hear and to use inclusive language; to be hopeful rather than condemning of the mistakes coworkers make; to think creatively about the future of what happens in the church building, and in this particular neighborhood, with an eye for those who are not already a part of our community; to deepen relationships, in order to deepen faith; and to take risks in order to create a safe place for other risk-takers to land should they be in danger—that is what I think it is to lead. Though these are not so different from my coworkers’ expectations, they have been formed by my very personal experiences of particular oppressors, my own mistakes, certain neighborhoods and specific relationships that my coworkers will never fully understand.
The Parish Administrator, our minister of outreach and lead Pastor are all highly sensitive to concerns like mine and I am learning from the way they voice their own concerns. They seem to have a relational style very different from my own, if not a theology that differs significantly. And yet, week after week, I am able to exegete, both the text and the congregation, in light of our locatedness, and explain myself in a way that builds bridges. The strategy here is to tell the truth as I see it, to listen humbly and be honest when I am too angry to do so.
When I offer the children’s word I try to tell the truth as I see it. I offer a thorough exegesis in a non-threatening tone. In age-appropriate language I offer them a taste of prayer-infused preaching so that rather than sum up the week’s lesson, which I am very much afraid to do, I simply choose to lead them in bowing heads and offering a question to a loving God. When I write Sunday school curriculum, I think first of the questions the students have already asked, problems they already face. Then, when we are together for the lesson, we begin the work of integrating their experience of God, what they have been taught about God, and what they hope to find out about God from me. As we work out our theologies, we ask a lot of questions and are intentional about leaving space for more.

The mini(s)tree
It is my hope that we will do the work of local theology together for the duration of my ministry. I plan to be ordained so that as the lives of my parishioners intersect with sacrament and struggles, I will be allowed by the larger church to preside and participate. But I am also aware that the ordination journey is as important to the local theology as is the ordination itself.
The ordination process is a process that affects the theology of all participants. Committee, candidate, sponsoring church, the candidate’s family and friends are all called to be honest and even angry at times but to always tell the truth in love, and ask difficult questions that will change the way we live theologically together. My call to be a ordained as a female minister of word and sacrament (whose particular interest is in the faith formation of children and families) is a call to action for those in my sphere of influence. Sometimes it elicits anger and highlights doctrinal differences. At other times it unites and validates those who have been othered over against hegemony.
I have chosen to move far from the Presbyterian congregation that is sponsoring my ordination. This geographical distance has called my home congregation to wonder how I will repay them for their support and how the distance between us will be bridged. How many and which trees will have to die in order that we may build a bridge of solid timbers? They have been curious about my motives and discernment processes. One woman in particular feels a heavy burden to be especially available by phone for me in ways she has never offered other candidates and admits that this very particular kind of connection to me has changed the way she is in relationship with me, with our church, and with God. The members of my sponsoring congregation are those who stand over the hole I am digging, the tree I am planting wondering what will come of all this digging, planting, questioning and hoping. They watch my theology change as a result of my surroundings and warn against certain influences and celebrate others.
Not only has my home congregation been called to the struggle but also those who write me a pay check every month. My position in the Lutheran Church has called into question the ecumenical motives of the church as it employs someone who maintains a theology very different from theirs. They love me deeply and each one of them has adopted a different way of working out the meaning of our theological differences.
Both churches have ecumenically informed theologies with deep roots. Though these roots may mean that transplanting is impossible, it also means that these old trees will bear new leaves, if not heirloom fruit, faithfully and in turn. These theologies, though locally informed and reformed by my very participation, are reaching deeply down into the fertile soil of tradition. Those roots reach down deeper than their most recent political agendas and even deeper through the habits that have yet to stand the test of time. As a result, we are learning to form a theology that works for us and against us in different seasons, like wind and water against a tree, according to what we need. And we see that even a local theology will speak of God: the God we experience, the God that is One in the here and now and forever.

too big.

2010-06-02T12:17:00.000-07:00

the old formatting was just too big... maybe you were feeling that too. & as for you, Joe L.: let me know if this is not working for you.

...more trees lately

2010-06-01T20:07:00.000-07:00

What do I do with time off, time to discern? I woke up this morning and twisted the little Ficus tree so it will grow more evenly. The new leaves have been standing straight up, greeting the light as it comes through the window. They are so funny standing on end like that! The older, wiser leaves lay down, bowing heavily and darker green. They are a little dusty, but they are also more trusting. They wait for the light to move toward them, I suppose. So I turned the pot just right because I don’t want this proud little tree to end up fluffy and full on one side or worse, leaning in fear that the light only loves one side.
This is what I do with time to discern. I look around at the new growth and the old growth. I think of leaning toward the light of the future and how earnestly I have done this. I think of my dusty, trusty parts as they bow to the future. There are new goals simply because there is new growth. I need to twist myself away, to turn away from the light so the new growth will twist too. I need to pull myself carefully away from the source or I will end up fluffy on one side and deprived on another. It isn’t a matter of waiting until there is something better to turn to (God is all around!). Rather, it is a matter of trusting that there is enough good light all around me and I must turn, must twist a little away and face the future.

and I found an old scrap of paper in my copy of Nouwen's In the Name of Jesus that says:
You have so much desire and I hope you always will but I want for you to learn to use it in ways that satisfy, or lead you to the God of those desires. Listen to all the desires: they will lead you, they will always lead to God.

and also, I found this:
This handsome ornamental is
dramatically colored in most seasons
with bright green foliage turning
orange and red in autumn, purple and
white flowers in spring, and young red
fruit in summer. The seeds of this and
other maples are consumed by
songbirds, game birds, and large and
small mammals. The scientific name,
meaning "rounded" or "circular," refers
to the leaf shape.
in the National Audubon Society field guide to trees of the western region.

its a lovely poem about a lovely tree...

for Kj

2010-06-01T19:50:00.000-07:00

Kj asked if I had already been assigned a Peanuts persona (these are the games we play, I guess). And, yes, I have... in fact it was given me so early in life that it was probably more prophetic than anything else. I've come to see that I have been living with it for so long, I'd hate to live without it...

so even if I am a little nervous you'll know me better than either of us ever intended, its only right you should watch this, er, as if it were maybe home movie footage. sigh. Anyway, I think something about Woodstock's resilience and attentive nature can really put folks at ease. You just kind of know its all going to be all right eventually, especially if you listen to the words of the song--they are very helpful!

& this came of it too

2010-05-25T19:46:00.000-07:00

The internship was just that helpful: I'm working on a series of poems about it. I think you might like this one, if you read it aloud, but even moreso if you have ever worn or ever loved someone who has worn clerics.

28"And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. 29Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. 30If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? 31So do not worry, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' 32For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. 33But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. 34Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

This Cotton

I am caught on is from
A Fortress: just a phone call away.
I give the orders.
And it arrives and its small brown box, too light,
Belies the misgivings.

Oh carrier of this holy calling,
You are more than a covering;
You tighten around my neck—
A collar: like the rising at the bell
This tintinnabulation tab -
let rangle me—
I choke on each word.

And I am to become
A Friar: fire tucked
below the belt.
Sustained by alms, the scratching of the sack
Cloth, sloth, wrath, pride, lust, envy, gluttony finally wrapped in a showy snowy shroud.
And I am drunk with power
on the spirits that burned my nose and throat, and finally fell into my gut.

You knit this while I was yet in my mother’s womb, weaving past and present,
Bring me back to!
A woman will convert you and I: in an upstairs room with a machine
Darting back and forth this way and that–
my mother tightened the white, in her affinity, her cotton for my skin,
(She is using the same machine to fix it in place
That once quilted scraps of my youth)
Bolting from the bolt:
Lightening—no, not weighing any less—
Rather, striking again and again,
Leaving crass like glass (see how my skin shows through!) where once was
One tiny stone, one Word among words,
atop a million others battered
against the water and roiling in the foam of hope.
And this cotton testifies that I too started from beneath your feet
But you never would have guessed—
I rose too high too fast—it was the busiest of illusions.

And you will know me, if you see me
A Vicar: vicarious curio, proudly displayed
Lined up behind a man, among men
Who fit better into this weave.

But mostly I am still…

A Woman: of the cloth
This (clo(th)ing) that bears buttons
Like batting and battens down, hatches all around me—
The flames of Pentecost
Or Jeremiah’s fire
Burning from the inside
Burying me in the white heat
And all that remains is to speak over you
And I: ashes to ashes,
dust to dust, and cotton enough to catch them.

I will miss you so...

2010-05-25T19:39:00.000-07:00

I don't know if you have ever thought of internship as a time to discern vocation. But I really think that a good internship reveals enough of the rigor and joy of a job. And so after a long talk with Pr. Hoffman, and an even longer (but wonderful) internship I came to the conclusion that I have been working under the mistaken belief that somehow I could be superhuman. Instead I would much rather be a regular human--its much healthier that way. So it is after three years of hard and lovely work that I, with an exhausted but hopeful heart, have composed this letter in order to bid farewell to my beloved Phinney Ridge Lutheran Church.

Dear Phinney Family,

This year I have watched you all grow in stature and grace as you allowed me to participate more fully in your lives. You have encouraged me, rejoiced with me, held me in your prayers, and we have imagined together and talked over hopes for the future. I am so grateful for your encouraging words and endless hoping. I think of your stories and rejoice. I smile as I think of running with you on the front lawn, holding you when you cried or singing along with you during the liturgy. You sang, “All Are Welcome,” and you meant it! I hear your words of encouragement echoing deep down, where they have taken root in my heart. You genuinely desire to care for every life you touch.
The evidence of your ministry to one another is in the long list of committed Sunday school teachers for which we have such sincere gratitude, and in the hearts of folks so excited to help out with Vacation Bible School that they would take vacation time from work to participate. I see the Angel Choir growing in number and ability, the Cherubs and Choristers using their gifts in new and inspiring ways. And that is only the beginning…
…Your work within the halls of Phinney is only one aspect of your gift to the larger church, there is still so much you will be and you have shown me this is true for all of us.
With your expressions of faith, hope and love as a guide, I have the courage to look realistically at my last year of Seminary. I have lots of work ahead of me but I find myself dreaming bigger than ever before about how I might prepare to serve the larger church. I have finally found the strength to wonder what God might teach me about finishing the race I began when I took up postgraduate work.
It is with great hopes for the future that I tender my resignation from my position as your Children and Family Minister. I am taking my leave from you at this time in order to spend the next year bringing closure to this chapter in my life. My family life will require more of me over the summer months, and in the fall I will be working on a master’s thesis, finishing course work at Mars Hill Graduate School and looking into the possibility of doctoral work. You will be in my heart and mind every step of the way.
I had not planned to leave you so soon; it has been a joy to watch you grow. And so our parting so soon is bittersweet but it is better for us to say goodbye before the summer disperses us. If there is one thing you have taught me, it is that there is much to be thankful for—especially in the unexpected. Though this may seem sudden, God’s timing has been perfect in the past and I have every reason to believe it will be in this situation also. We are entering Ordinary Time in our liturgical calendar; may it be, as ever, the Great Green Growing Season we have come to know, need and love. As we reflect on what my absence will mean, may we be mindful of God’s provision for our every need.

I trust God will use these warm days and a season of rest to bring peace to your home and mine,

hahahahahhahahahhhahhhha...

2010-05-04T08:56:00.001-07:00

making moves

2010-04-16T19:47:00.000-07:00

joel e. o. has lodged some complaints with the editing department and so the font is larger now... I hope you won't think I'm operating under some kind of enlarged, cartoonish, egoism, or anything like that. And I'm away for the weekend, so don't check back until Monday-ish because its officially a vacation and then after that I'm sure I'll have plenty to say, so save up your eyeball, readerly energy for that.

some last things

2010-04-11T16:18:00.000-07:00

Today I preached my last sermon as Vicar. It went well I think... so there you have it.:

I’m just going to tell you right now: they didn’t ask me to preach because I know God better than you do. Or at least, I hope they didn’t

because I don’t. I only know of God what I have seen.

I am not a Biblical Scholar, I am not a Systematic Theologian. And I don’t intend to be. My work here is to answer your questions with a kind look rather than a solid answer.

My job is to come close enough to whisper to you that I don’t know why bad things happen to God’s children, but I do want to be near you when (not IF) they do, in case I can somehow offer comfort that distance or diplomas would not permit.

Sometimes it is nearness that matters most.

It seems that is what mattered most to Thomas.

We call him Doubting Thomas because he is having a little trouble believing that Jesus has risen, and even more trouble believing that Jesus has come back and come close.

He tells his friends that he wants to see Christ for himself that he wants to get up close enough to examine the wounds of his dear friend, perhaps like a father checking a bicycle crash scrape for tiny pebbles, maybe Thomas wanted to verify Jesus’ identity, or maybe he knew it would be so nice just to be that close and personal again.

It doesn’t sound like a shocking request to me. I don’t fault Thomas for asking. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve told God,

“All right, You. Its time to show up because I’m feeling so alone out here and I’ve made such a mess of things. And don’t just send a representative—You’re God with us, so get with it.”

We all have moments of mind-numbing doubt but we also, all of us, bear witness—our beliefs tend to show in our behaviors, no matter what.

It is quite possible that they gave me this job because I am willing, if not able, to articulate the things I believe, and to tell you about the things I have seen.

So I’ll just be like a good disciple I’m going to tell you outright what I saw.

I can’t tell you what God looks like because I can count on one hand the number of times I know God showed up and

every time

God showed up looking a lot less like I thought God ought to
and a lot more like something else entirely.

And by the time the smoke of my disbelief cleared it was all I could do to turn to an innocent bystander and double check,

“Did you see that? Did that look like GOD to you?! Well, did you get a good look at his face, his hands?”

And I end up sounding a lot more like a doubting Thomas than I would like to.

Looking for God can be a little like aiming binoculars at a moving target sometimes. It’s more like bird watching than going to the zoo. So instead of studying up on systematic theology, which I haven’t found to be very satisfying, I gave up on trying to get the facts and figures all right.

I’ve been busy watching over your kids.

It’s another kind of bird watching altogether.

One of them showed up in a newspaper/masking tape crown complete with poker chips for jewels with a paper/scotchtape robe and scepter to match. And I knew, without a shadow of doubt, I knew that if this garb had been offered to God, God would totally wear a paper crown and cape like that—God would appreciate the know-how required to turn ordinary paper into something regal. God would see the hard work required to craft such adornments and call it worship and God would wear them proudly.

Another of these birds broke out in song, as clear as a church bell, as he colored madly away on a picture of a robot. And I knew, there was no doubt, that God would definitely sing like that, with abandon, adding a little color to the sunset, or drawing in a few more clouds around the edges. I knew God could sing just like that…

Then, just last week,

it was Easter morning and so I may have been a bit bleary eyed, perhaps a little overwhelmed by the lily smells and Alleluia bells. But I looked up and saw one running toward her daddy to pass the peace and I was never so sure as I was then that God runs, God runs like a girl let loose toward what she most wants. God is at once all pumping knees and breeze and abandon on God’s way and who can stop God from coming close and passing peace when the time is right? I know, walking feet are a must for people like me prone to tripping and crashing but God doesn’t seem to worry about that sort of thing. Only God can teach us how to really pass the peace with such gusto.

St. John corroborates my testimony: he writes that Jesus did come close enough, did offer himself, bodily, to even the most vocal of doubters.

And then to the rest of us, who have to go lifetimes without seeing, he offered us

a blessing.

Blessed are those who have not seen, and yet believe

Because we are the bird watchers, waiting for a glimpse, holding onto hope, adjusting our bifocals and hearing aids because

These little birds, over whom we have been told to watch so closely, are not put here as a noisy distraction.

These little ones bear the image of God as they don paper vestments or sing aloud the praises gushing forth from deep within their hearts, as they rush forward and somehow, in a tiny song or embrace bring with them the peace that passes all understanding,

Lest we forget that the least of these are the littlest Christs in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

a la twitter

2010-04-11T15:46:00.001-07:00

yes. tweet tweet.

ridiculess

2010-04-10T10:59:00.000-07:00

So there is one of you especially (especial
special, to me)
who has been trying for years ( many of you have been working toward this goal) to remember
that
I am ridiculous, don't take it personally.
and I heard you might tie a string around your finger so you will always remember... maybe I should just get you a promise ring: I promise I have always been and will always be at least a little ridiculous.
Ironically when I received the call about this your most recent disappointment (i.e.:that I am not on facebook anymore, that I didn't let you know personally [which I meant to do] and that you have lost the new and good way to stay connected with me) the caller proclaimed that I have to change the outgoing message on my voicemail, which sounds quite professional and serious, and when she hears it she is a little afraid to leave a ridiculous message... at which I began to giggle uproariously.

So even though I have often been insulted by the application of the descriptor, and though it has been used as an insult before, it has not hurt as badly lately because I know I can be ridiculous
and every day I am a little less afraid to be, and hope you will be less and less angry with me for being so.

So I'll leave you with this, a very ridiculous thing that is happening to me lately:
Leeann Womack (isn't that an amazing last name?!) and Taylor Swift (again, the last name slays me every time!?) have been naming things I wish they weren't so apt to name.

I accidentally quoted Ms. Womack in class the other day and we all laughed our asses off:
one of the pastors said he wanted me to embrace my freedoms and I told him it was hard and that whenever I hear the little bit of that song that says, "never settle for the path of least resistance..." I worry a little bit. So I thought you might like this little reminder that there is a lot of ridiculous in me...

I'm not so embarrassed, especially since we have recently been into corny poetry because it is a little like us: prone to overdramatize and underexplain; tempted to settle for generalization and common images that can be boring, if you try to take them too seriously.

And as for Ms. Swift, I received a voicemail recently about a song with my name in it and though the caller and I were a little sheepish about having heard the song, we have in fact heard it. So here is the part that is important and not so ridiculous that we are afraid to admit it: "Abigail gave everything she had to a boy who changed his mind and we both cried."
Its part of the story, and I suppose I like how silly it all sounds when she sings it because the alternative is to give it way more weight than it ought to have, which is to say, let it scare me more than it ought to.
and I love the way it doesn't lay direct blame on either party. It sort of lets the birds out of their cages. And that is always good--even if it is sad and funny and ridiculous--you just have to try not to be annoyed initially, that is all.
I know you aren't ridiculous enough to look for the song without a little prompting, and that you may not at all ever want to hear it, much less see it but I think its um, well, really trueish. So I found this little video which may help

I just thought it might help.

Lastly: I'm off the facebook for a while because it just got to be too much exposure. I serve a large congregation in a small town posing as a big city and I am not able to make sense of the way facebook holds together all the disparate pieces of my life. So I'll be back on facebook just as soon as I can. Until then I'll be here, dear.

If you made it to this last bit of the post, your eyes haven't rolled right out of your head, and you are in dire need of some quality poetics to cleanse your palette (phew!) here is a piece from the book my abuelitos gave to me for my 30th. It is a series of shorts about a man and his little friend, who is more a friend than donkey, but you will only see this if you get to know him.

The book is named for the two characters Platero y Yo by Juan Ramon Jimenez and because it was written in Spanish a good English translation will retain all the charming quirkiness of the original poetry behind the prose.
XLIII: Friendship
We get along well. I let him go wherever he likes, and he always carries me wherever I want.
Platero knows that, when we arrive at the pine of La Corona, I like to go up to its trunk and caress it, and to look at the sky through its enormous, bright top; he knows I'm delighted by the little path that leads past bushes to the Old Fountain; that I enjoy watching the river from the hill of pines, whose high-perched little forest is reminiscent of classical sites. When I doze off, securely seated on him, my awakening always opens out onto some such charming view.
I treat Platero as if he were a child. If the road becomes rocky and is a little hard on him, I dismount to relieve him. I kiss him, I play tricks on him, I get him furious... He understands perfectly that I love him, and he doesn't hold a grudge. He's so much like me, and so different from everyone else, that I've come to believe he dreams my own dreams.
Platero has submitted to me like a passionate adolescent girl. He protests at nothing. I know that I spell happiness for him. He even shuns donkeys and men...

If I stop worrying that these two friends are doomed to enmeshment, or that there is some kind of unhealthy anthropomorphic tendency on the human's part, I can see that there is a great beauty in remembering the great difference in the way we treat a friend when we come to respect him.

It is difficult, always difficult, to remember that some friends are really human and that to be human is to be ridiculous, but deserving of respect nonetheless. Which is why some of us prefer to befriend a beast, or a tree, a simpler time or a simpler poem. I do hope you will remember to be what you are, human, and that you will remember I am human
but I also hope you won't give up on me, and that my humanness won't enrage you, and that if I am at times the adolescent girl, you will know that in that moment you spell my happiness, and that I would gladly shun men and donkeys, and facebook, if there was a hope it would make me into be a better friend.

making a few changes

2010-04-05T16:01:00.000-07:00

The skinnytree is undergoing a few changes. I hope you like these changes and I'm sorry if you don't, because, well, even though I generally hate change, sometimes it gets to be time to be brave.

I am not the puzzle, I am the masterpiece;
not the riddle but a kind of answer to the riddles that have caused you such trouble.
And sometimes, when you look at me that way and tell me
We don't have to fall apart
I think I am the lightening bolt to the tree in your heart that arrives along with a new kind of understanding.
And I am learning to trust that we are these things for each other because I am learning to trust you when
You tell me,
every day,
you tell me,
in your own way
you tell me.

Dear Ms. Shoffstall

2010-04-03T14:36:00.000-07:00

We (yes, the royal we: Jackson and I, if you want to be included, just let me know) have begun to appreciate the prayers and poetry of the 60's and 70's especially that which was published by women or for women who were single mothers or young daughters with too much college ahead and too much love lost behind. Generally these are published in books with covers looking a bit like popular kitsch looks these days--some steamy looking roses or a teapot and spilled milk, maybe a drawing of a sleeping cat or tired bird midflight. And the pictures of the poets in the back look a little like Farrah Fawcett might look after a long morning with a twin two-year-olds and a longer afternoon with a makeup and lighting crew.

A woman who knows (what has been going on around here), She handed me an old rectangle of paper when she was here to visit a few months ago. I was told that a good friend clipped it out of a newspaper when she was going through divorce, then, when the smoke cleared she passed it along. So I'm third to carry this little poem with me, and I do so proudly. Neither of them knew who had written it because the editor was not kind enough to include your name (for shame!). My version has some funny line breaks and lots of capitol letters, which I am not sure about--maybe they are the workings of the 19 year old poet mind, or maybe just an editor's foibles. Either way, I get a really helpful (if not too voilently bastardized) version the point you might have been trying to make--I think, especially when this particular copy has the history it has...

I get the feeling carrying this little piece of yellowed typing paper in my wallet is like lifting some kind of emotional barbell. Maybe one day, as dear Jackson promises: it is possible that even the tiniest artists (we?!) might win a power-lifting competition. If not in a Portland-area highschool gymnasium then at least in the middle of the night: for having the strength of will to pick ourselves up off the floor again; or in the messy bedroom: for lifting our heavy heads off the pillow and greeting one more gray day; or in the MDiv practicum, surrounded by (eek!) pastors: for being brave enough to raise an eyebrow when someone punishes us for pushing back. If the poem on the page isn't the weight we lift, then it is a spotter for whatever is weighing me down... every day.

I looked for an image of you, just in case you fit the bill we so admire these days, or in case you used to, but I think you must be so beautiful it would hurt to look at you, because my attention span wasn't long enough for all the searching that seemed to require. You work for the Baha'i Faith, so there is that--its probably good for the complexion to do good work.
I did a little research (really, very little) and found this version of the poem and the author's note which belies just how wise you are even now. I would have written you, to thank you and tell you that I'm just passing it on, because it was so helpful to me and to ask permission or something like it and tell you that this poet has found your poem to be just fine, doing good work--and plenty of folks agree with me. But I would have had to join Linkedin to do that and I'm not really feeling it.

So, Ms. Shoffstall, if you find this and wish I'd take it down, just leave a comment to that effect and I will surely take it down, if not then, thanks for that too. Either way, perhaps you'll forgive me if I couldn't find a version that duly compliments your inner 19 year old.

So without further delay:

Veronica Shoffstall, 1971

AFTER A WHILE

After a while you learn the subtle difference

between holding a hand and chaining a soul and

you learn that love doesn't mean leaning and

company doesn't always mean security.

And you begin to learn that kisses aren't contracts

and presents aren't promises and

you begin to accept your defeats with your head up and

your eyes ahead with the grace of woman,

not the grief of a child and

you learn to build all your roads on today because

tomorrow's ground is too uncertain for plans and

futures have a way of falling down in mid-flight.

After a while you learn that even sunshine burns

if you get too much so

you plant your own garden and decorate your own soul instead

of waiting for someone to bring you flowers.

And you learn that you really can endure

you really are strong

you really do have worth and

you learn and

you learn

with every goodbye, you learn.

(Author's note: This poem has been plagiarized, bastardized, renamed, reworded, redesigned, expanded and reduced. But it is my work, which I wrote at the age of 19 and had published in my college yearbook. Why anyone would want to claim it is beyond me, but for what it's worth, I wrote it, and if I'd known it was going to be this popular, I'd have done a better job of it. - V.S. )

For Andy W.E. and Lisa Sparrow

2010-03-31T11:41:00.000-07:00

Even on an ordinary Tuesday, you shine like Sabbath sun and play like its a prayer:
You dreamed of inviting us all into your home and we came.
And we do it often, or wish we could, because it seems so easy to be at home with you.

When we arrived at the intersection of Sacred and Profane, we found you painting walls pink, cooking us dinner, planting a garden and hoping not for bounteous produce but only for a place where we all might be nourished by learning to love the dirt; you left the gate unlocked and the dog unchained to greet us.

You are the hopers, the dreamers, the risk-takers who retreat into the forest and then emerge ready for another month of life in the urban ecosystem And as you live in the holy bothness of your forest love and city heart I think of all that I want to be--much of which you already are. You see new life for the prostitutes and would anoint the Johns with oil. You keep watch over the human traffic as it mingles with the morning commute and I am ever mindful of the adventurous spirit you bring to all you do.
And I will never forget the day you warmed my cold old soul with coffee and split open pomegranates so that when I felt most exhausted and infertile, you noticed my hands covered in red like a midwife's: shrouded in evidence she has been with the newly born.

I wrote the following piece on the day I learned it . You have known it all well for a long time. But I want you to see it. And I'm posting all this here, even though I could just send you an email, so that folks will know that you are, that you live this and during this, the holiest of holy weeks, when blood and water; death and life collide, everyone might know that you exist,
That you are
and that you are
Dear Guardians of the holiness of whores and the Jesus in the Johns...
and this our hope for our children is what you birth every day.
And I thank you, with all my heart, thank you.
::::::::::::
October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month...
so there is this:
NATIONAL DECLARATION BY RELIGIOUS AND SPIRITUAL LEADERS

TO ADDRESS VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN

We proclaim with one voice as national spiritual and religious leaders that violence against women exists in all communities, including our own, and is morally, spiritually and universally intolerable.

We acknowledge that our sacred texts, traditions and values have too often been misused to perpetuate and condone abuse.

We commit ourselves to working toward the day when
all women will be safe and abuse will be no more.

We draw upon our healing texts and practices to
help make our families and societies whole.

Our religious and spiritual traditions compel us to work for justice and the eradication of violence against women."

* * *

then there is also this thought I'm working on, a part of my self, my story, haunting me, like a ghost of an idea about falling and failing in love, jumpers, flight and fight and all these other ways we move into love and out again.

there was a moment yesterday, crossing the aurora bridge, the one famous for all the jumping from its trestles, and I thought of flying instead of falling.

I thought of the birds, like swallows, moving wings once or twice and then stealing through the air without moving a muscle. Chins up, wings folded, toes curled, feeling the power of the one thrust propelling them toward the next tree.
I straightened my back, closed my arms straight down my sides, and stretched my neck toward the sky, blue and filled with the cold of autumn against my face. I had pulled back against the wind of fear, and it lifted me up higher than it ever has so I could rest against it for a moment and slide myself between clouds like bed sheets or warm water.

I thought of all the times and places to fall in love.
The truth is that these days I am better than I've been in years. Old friends tell me they see me again, the ways I used to be and new friends say it is nice to hear me sing along, to see me play along, bounce down the sidewalk, smile honestly, weep it out, and hold on to myself.

But there are moments, when I feel so alone.
In those moments I think of all the missed opportunities: the chances we didn't take.

if you stop taking advantage of the chances to fall in love, they begin to disappear, they are replaced by anger, dead ends, silence, yelling, screaming, hating... you begin taking risks to fall in love. I began to let myself fall for hurtful things because that was all I knew and all that was offered and so the falling in love became more like suicide jumping. I was falling for anything, everything and not just falling but jumping and hurling, hurtling, hurting,
like a kamikaze fighter pilot, heading straight into death, fearlessly, gracefully and powerfully into the pain (to cause it, to feel it)... but not honestly, or hopefully and not in a healthy way--only silently, secretly, furtively, dangerously, thinking only of saving my marriage, not myself.

then there was one night
i sat on a park bench, smoked two cigarettes, drank a can of simpler times lager
and then

i called a friend who said haven't you been through enough?
i called my dad who said you can feel guilty if you want to but you didn't do anything wrong.
i called my sister who said it sounds just awful.
i called my mother...
and by the grace of God she said
don't ever give up hope
but i heard her say
Love can happen to anyone, anywhere, it can happen over and over again. The way birds migrate toward warmer weather, or return for a break from the heat of things with full bellies and nearly grown babies. think of love following you, waiting for you, wanting you, even when you are moving from one warm place to another, trading trees for oceans, not life for death.
you needn't go about love like you're on a suicide mission. that is not hopeful, not helpful.
so
here is a list of things to look out for, excerpted from a pamphlet published by planned parenthood:
"Does your partner...
Threaten to harm you, pets, or himself?
Blame you for everything that goes wrong?
Lie or break promises to you a lot?
Ever say, "you make me get this angry," or "I can't help being so mad with you around."?
Expect you to do everything he says?
Ignore or dismiss your ideas or the things you want to do?
Get jealous when you spend time with family or friends?
Seem very overprotective or ask other people to watch over you?
Call you all the time?
Accuse you of flirting or getting romantically involved with someone else?
Keep you from having money of your own?
Force you to have sex when you're asleep?
Get angry and threaten you when you don't want to have sex?
Force you to have sex without protection against pregnancy
Hurt your genitals or any part of your body during sex?
Criticize your sexual performance or use sex as a way to punish you?
Only care about his own sexual pleasure?
Refuse to take full responsibility for the abuse?
Refuse to get professional help?
Become more and more abusive?

if you answer yes to any of the above, you are in an unsafe relationship."

Don't rush forward. Get some space, take a deep breath, that might be all you can do for now. But the day will come when someone will offer you help, hope...

because there is more out there and you have not missed your chance to be loved, you just aren't loved by that person, and that doesn't mean you are unlovable altogether.

one day
there will be a different yes because there will be a different set of questions...

"Do you talk openly about your feelings and tell the truth without fear?
Do you listen to each other's ideas?
Do you solve problems and disagreements together?
Do you each have friends, interests and activities of your own, and ones that you share?
Do you respect each other's privacy?
Are you proud of each other's talents and accomplishments?
Do you talk openly about your sexual needs and desires?
Do you protect each other from unintended pregnancy?
Do you always have each other's consent for sex?
Do you help take care of each other?
Do you have disagreements without becoming violent?
Do you respect each other's belongings?
Do you feel closer to your partner as times goes on?
Do you feel happy when you think about staying together?
Do you solve problems together more and more?"

Well, do you? Do you want to? Do you know you could, would, will?

Don't ever give up hope. Look for the next chance, take the next chance to be loved but if you feel yourself falling too far, too fast, don't forget
hope is a set of wings, a warm updraft, a curl in your toes and a lift in your chin, hope does not search the horizon for an enemy, or watch the ground for signs of life to be snuffed out, hope does not increase the speed of disaster,

hope turns falling around and failure takes flight...

We are the storytellers

2010-03-26T18:24:00.000-07:00

We are the prove it to me, show me kind of people that we are because we have made it too easy to deny the power of words.so if a picture is worth a thousand words, then what is a poem worth? Or a fable? How many words is it going to take for us to unravel the truth hidden in a fable? How many words, how much wine will be spilled, as we work out together what each line, each syllable, each vowel, is trying to do to us for us, or with us as we read? Are they worth the words they’re written in if they are going to require so many more? How much meaning ought we smash into each word so that it might finally bear the fullness we hoped it would? How many possibilities must each word hold in order to tell you the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth?

Given the option (and believe me, I have been given such an option) I have chosen to stare at a word instead of a photograph. I have an affinity for paintings that seem almost to have been crossed out, because the artist has used the brush like a pencil and written a word over the top of a still life. Even the painters end up saying, if not writing, the words to help us understand what they were trying to do with an image or color or line, and the captions enrich or take away from the meaning because they are just that important.

This whole thing makes me want to figure out the perfect way to put up or shut up.

How on earth are we supposed to get back into the pulpit every week?

Damnit,
we are the story tellers, even if we are the photographers, the painters, we are also the truth tellers and nay sayers, the chatty cathys and gossip columnists and the only reason we tell our children "sticks and stones can break our bones but words can never hurt" is because we know damn well that words hurt and so we must tell ourselves... well, something, anything.
So how do we go about telling a story about God who explains there are blessings for those who can believe without seeing? I mean, if words are so powerful they are bound to hurt, even if they're just trying to tell the truth and it seemed like a good idea, and then in the end it wasn't because it just wasn't as helpful to tell the story as to be a part of living the story... but we don't have the option of seeing it with our own eyes. Its such an awful mess we're in.

See, I refuse to believe the story of Thomas is about how Thomas was supposed to trust God (God shows up sometimes and sometimes God doesn't). And that is precisely why the story is more about Thomas learning to trust his friends' when they say, "omygawd! Thomas, he was here, he was right here! You just missed him!" Its about Thomas giving credence to the words and then letting them hang in the air long enough to dispel at least a little of the jealousy that reigns upon overhearing a friend got to see the miracle and he didn't.

Its about shutting up and shutter release, but its not about God having to prove Godself, or telling us that its wrong to desire that God would show up. God doesn't ever have to prove anything--its one of the privileges that come with being God. Another one is that you're more in control of your emotions than humans. So I really don't think God is pissed because Thomas didn't get it the first time and I don't think it was any huge effort for God to make time to go down and help Thomas out in a moment of dis...pair, dis-ease, dis-belief, what have you.

I know the Thomas like picture takers and kinesthetics like me, we are not in such dire straits because God does show up sometimes, not always when we need it most--sometimes when we don't need it at all. Its more like those of us who would prefer the first hand account to the revised standard edition are missing out on one kind of blessing that comes with giving in to the power the storytellers possess (I would call it "the power of the gospel" but that is a little cloying). Thomas' friends were brave enough to open their mouths and confess--we've got to give their story a little credence. So, he says, blessed are those who have not seen (they've learned to take their friends at their word, and good friends with good words are hard to find).

But then Jesus keeps showing up! So maybe its a win/win, or at least a lose/lose: either you're going to get the blessing of blind faith and somehow know the truth when you hear its feint whisper or you're going to get the picture, the whole picture and nothing but the picture, you're going to taste and touch and see and that will be that. Thomas' only real mistake was doubting his friends, his only betrayal was in telling them he just didn't trust them. If they hadn't been flying high as frat boys on a Friday night, intoxicated by the sight of Jesus alive and kicking, the gospel would probably say something about Thomas bringing them down: "Man, Thomas, we knew you weren't going to believe us! Why did we even say anything man!" I think the word "jaded" would probably have been in there somewhere, you know Jaded Thomas, instead of Doubting Thomas, I'm just sayingisall.

But Thomas' gospel buddies stand quietly by, you can almost hear their eyes roll innocently toward the ceiling. They're so sure of what they saw and what they said, they're sure that their level of excitement was warranted (they pulled the piece out on the lanes, so to speak and its left to Thomas, who seems like the kind of shitter you can't shit, and the biggest loser because of it. They saw it with their own eyes. But in talking about it they've done the unspeakable and expected Thomas to believe the impossible. They told him Jesus was there and even if Jesus had crossed the threshold, it was Thomas' friends who crossed the line. Their story had such a hold on Thomas: he probably feels like a real jerk for showing up too late to see the miracle, and an even worse jerk because they probably were right, but they didn't have to expect him to believe it! How could they?!

They're not wrong, Walter, they're just assholes. Yeah, you know what I'm getting at, I'll be buggered if, in my imagination at least, its not exactly like when Walter tells the Dude, "calmer'n you are, dude, calmer'n you." So Thomas just prays they'll shut up about all their big plans and the next round robin and all that "if you will it, it is no dream crap." So he puts it in reverse and slowly backs out of the handicap spot.

What is a Thomas supposed to do?

Its the words that bother him so much that he wants to give up on them--they hurt. There is no way such a painful truth won't cause a little doubt, discomfort, disbelief, especially when you have to hear about it. Thomas tells them off when he says, "Well then, have it your way. I'm going to do more than just see Jesus. If he is alive I'm going to touch him. I'm going to go about this smarter than you, braver than you. I'm going to ask to see where the nails went it--wouldn't you like to have made sure he was who he said he was? Did you even check him out? Or were you all just imagining him?" And in the end it is the power of those words that come back to make Thomas sure that God is God and cares about Thomas. Its the power of the savior saying all those words right back to Thomas, telling him its time for getting exactly what he wanted, that elicits Thomas admission that this is God. We don't get to know whether Thomas actually touched Jesus or not, but we know those words touched Thomas' soul until he picks up right where he never intended to and decides to use more words, to confess that Jesus is the Lord--good grief!

And Jesus responds in kind, kindly, like God is sometimes wont to do when he tells it like it is, and in my head I can imagine that crazy Jesus telling his Thomas

Well, there you have it Thomas, this is how it had to go down between us--you're just being you and I'm just being me. I gave you the opportunity to let the storytellers rule the day, but you let their words get you all worked up in all the wrong ways. So instead of the blessing of blind belief, I'm giving you what you asked for. It will be harder from now for you to trust me because I've given in to your whims. But that is okay, you'll be okay. Just remember that if you don't see me next time, its not because I don't want to show up again, its not punishment or withdrawal; its because blind belief is just as good as what you asked for. I want you to know it too because I want you to know the power of the story--I can show up just as well in the Word as I do in the flesh. Blessed are those who don't get to see me--you'll be among them soon, and they'll believe you when the tables are turned and you're the storyteller. Just wait--you'll see the power in your own words and it will teach you to lean on the words, love the words; Love the Word Thomas, it loves you.

That's just how I imagine it anyway... I'm not sure, but it seems like a pretty good explanation for an often abused story, don't you think? I mean, if you walk away feeling a little less guilty about wanting to see for yourself then I think that is good and if you're left with a little more respect for your own ability to tell the truth then that is super and maybe, just maybe you're not going to worry when they tell you, because they will:
you're not wrong, Walter, you're just an asshole,
because really sometimes you are an asshole and sometimes you're not and who gets to say which is which anyway? Maybe you're just you being you and me being me and sometimes that is exactly how the gospel goes down.

and another thing about:

2010-02-26T23:37:00.000-08:00

The thing about a blog is this: it is different from a book because it happens late at night and I can write about you because you show me a little picture of your face when you sign on as a follower, or you confess in an email that you have been reading the blog... (I should tell you that because I am a little ashamed to be associated with the bloggers and blogs of the world I refer affectionately to this little bit of periodical as 'the skinnytree'--I hope you will too because 'blog' and 'blogging' and 'blogger' can be such an embarrassing thing to claim, mostly because the word log is involved and I hate to imagine the skinnytree reduced to firewood, you know: logs, and such unless you are going to build a giant bonfire so you can keep warm while you sleep all night out on the beach...)
[Dear gawd, those were good sleeps out there with nothing but my favorite sleeping bag (which I still have), my bestest friends (all boys, ironically) and their giant bonfire made of huge timber brought forth to us out of the roils of the pacific oh!-shen...]

Anyways there are these things I am thinking tonight and because you are not just reading a book I wrote, not just perusing a collection of my poems I can take advantage of a sort of subscription you have bought into and keep you up to date. woo. hoo.
so for one thing
I was reading through Wendell Berry's Jayber Crow and thinking that it might be my favorite book these days because he says things like
But sometimes a prayer comes that you have not thought to pray, yet suddenly there it is and you pray it. Sometimes you just trustfully and easily pass into the other world of sleep. Sometimes the bird finds that what looks like an opening is an opening, and it flies away. Sometimes the shut door opens and you go through it into the same world you were in before, in which you belong as you did not before.
He keeps writing things like that. All kinds of things like that godamnit. You really should try this book out. I mean it, in the most Reading Rainbow spirit of recommending books. Lavar Burton is going to jump out from behind a tree at any moment and say you don't have to take my word for it.

and for another
We have been working like little mules on a video which will be sent out to possible donors so the graduate school I love so well will be more sufficiently funded (it is young and so has no endowment). We transcribed the interviews and read through the text of it until we were drunk from the possibility that these things these folks are confessing in these interviews are not just hopeful, they are also true. Which leads me to wonder as to how many of the things we hope to be living also happen to be true about life in general, if only we would stumble upon some kind of proof? Too bad hope evades proof... if you could prove it you would have just passed it by anyway and you wouldn't have to hope in it anymore; it would turn into something from the past, rather than something for the future and ouch. That would suck, I think.
So I keep noticing things that portend some kind of larger lovely thought or even something as simple as the next poem. I keep on tracking with the next blossom, the next bead of sweat on your brow or the next drop of rain. I hope for the next favorite book to reveal itself or the next friend to send word she is pregnant. I wonder when you will photocopy your degree and send a copy via snail mail, I wonder when you will tell me you have been reading along and the skinnytree is helping. I worry (just a little) that you will refuse the anti-depressants or forget to take them each day because I hope that you will even out and integrate so that when you cry you won't feel as though it is reason to abandon who you really are.

so here is a quick little poem about it:

there is a song,
a sound
about
around about
the night I lay bleeding and
nestled, nested,
wrestled, rested, against the cotton
of your folded wing during the storm.
In and out of my waking, the sleep and not sleeping moments between cloudbursts and lightening bolts,
over the din of dreams, under the drowning of my sorrows,
which wove us tighter together:
where before only a prayer tied me to you
now there is a rope and its knot:
a body and its blood
(whole and parts of it
moving together like one note among the rest in the notes, love).

A shoebox full of loveletters is like
trying to contain a river in a wine glass...
I can't recommend it.
but if you made copies of all the things I wrote
and sent them back to me
well,
at least that is real...
evidence of the way the exchange never ends.
it is a little like how
tears are part of the water cycle, the process by which water moves up over down and around:
evaporation condensation precipitation
love is like that
too:;:;
particles
clouds/fogs
droplets
the rising and falling and song of it against the window and puddling
all about around about.

& that is enough for now I think. goodnight.

so you know what I'm saying about you.

2010-02-21T17:10:00.000-08:00

to those of you who remember camp so fondly: I do too... but I think you also remember how scary it was to be so close to those screaming mountain lions... and if you lived at camp you remember how good it was as well as how hard it was, which is why I love you so.

to those of you who love camping: you probably already know I'd sleep outside under the stars and blue moons with the best of you, I'm not really squeamish about that. but good grief, I really love taking long showers these days.

to those of you who don't like sermons, even of the most honest types: you can stop reading here, my dear.

022110, phinney ridge lutheran church, seattle wa.
I grew up at summer camp. No, really. We were there, all year, every year for 12 years. Our house was at the end of a dirt road nestled between a hill too steep to climb and a creek too swift to cross. Kids my age came by the hundreds from the suburbs of San Francisco and then returned to their sidewalks and streetlights after a week’s stay. They said I was so lucky to live in the woods. They loved to visit the wilderness and wished they could stay longer. I, on the other hand, lived in the wilderness. I knew better. I worried in winter that the creek would rise and flood the roads again. I remembered when the electricity was out for two weeks straight and we cooked on a propane camp stove the whole time. I became an excellent camper, of the highest order. But I hated it. I was stung by bees, bitten by mosquitos, lost on long hikes and my throat stung constantly from dust caught in my sinus—not just for a week or two each year but every day, all year. It was a real wilderness time for my whole family. The wilderness is a dangerous place. But mostly I thought of it as uncomfortable. I didn’t take it seriously. I didn’t respect it. I took it for granted. I dreamed of an escape. And Really we all do. My friends from the suburbs dreamed of getting away from the cement and drug deals while I dreamed of getting away from the threat of mountain lions and forest fires.

We give in to the idea that danger is temporary or that discomfort won’t last and so we never come to respect the familiarity of discomfort or see danger as a constant companion. When I think of the Messiah in the wilderness, I want him to be a hero—even though I should know better. I want him to wave off temptation as though he were swatting mosquitos. I want him to outsmart dangers and avoid discomforts of all kinds. It is so easy to overemphasize his divinity and figure it was simple enough for him to handle wilderness and temptation, danger and discomfort. His days on earth were numbered. But the truth of the matter is that so are mine, by a God who knows what it is like to have skin that is no match for thorny brambles, bones that ache from walking too far and a heart that breaks too easily. The Messiah experienced danger and discomfort just as real and lasting as any that you and I confront. The difference between the Son of Man and this child of God is that Jesus wasn’t always planning his escape. The Christ draws near to drug dealers and comes close enough to hear the mountain lions scream—he doesn’t turn and run, nor does he expect them to arrive at perfect on their own. There was one way for the Messiah to truly come, to be with us in solidarity and perfection. It says right there in Luke’s text that he knew the discomfort of hunger pangs, just like you and I are hungry when we are really hungry. He was not just peckish and not power hungry either but hungry nonetheless with the kind of hunger that comes after a long lost connection with something beloved. He was hungry like the widower gets lonely or the orphan hopes for a mother’s embrace. This hunger is the kind that comes when the addict needs a fix or the prisoner hopes for release. But Jesus, unlike us isn’t desperate to escape it, or solve it or wish it away. He stays in it, God, with us. We can be sure that the Messiah from today’s story is after more than bread, but we can also be assured that he knows what it is like to need sustenance. He walks steadily out of the wilderness and calmly, gently, proclaims a blessing over the song of our whining bellies: He knows our hunger, He knows our need—(He brought us to this place, and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey) and He is here, with us To say You needn’t live on bread alone. In fact, the worst wilderness is not any easier to handle on a full belly because it is going to be dangerous—no matter what. I’ve traded the redwood trees of my childhood for a life among the brick buildings but I know there is more to life than my surroundings—there is my inner life to attend to. And there, I find myself still wishing to escape dangers and discomforts of all kinds.

We always want for something easier and simpler. I wanted to wake up this morning with a renewed sense of my calling, unafraid! and confidently preach my first sermon as your Vicar. But I didn’t wake up in denial of the import of this task and so I’m left wanting more and hoping to escape the wilderness of my insecurities, if just for this moment and bless you with a hopeful word. I’m out here in the wilds of internship and I am aware of the dangers of this position, deep down in my gut. It grumbles a little as it digests and suddenly I am aware of my need in a new way. I am ever more aware that I don’t need more food, I need more faith. I need to trust, to hope, to love and that means I need you. I need this community, I need this common meal to make the discomforts of life into something bearable, maybe even beautiful! I need communion with you to strengthen me for this long journey. We all need to return to this bread and water and wine as often as we can.

At the end of the day I am glad the Christ knew hunger well because I am hungry. I am glad he is not avoiding discomfort because we are hungry and hurting and wanting for more than a simple trail mix, snack-sized spirituality. And here is this bread--so big it has to be broken. We want more than a bottle of water: And here is this font overflowing with the waters of grace and purity splashing so high and loudly that we jump out of our seats when we hear it poured out for all of us. They are here, we are here Right here. You and I are out in the wilderness of our lives but we are not alone we are together with Jesus and here we will come to see that because of him this water and this bread are satisfying, they are more lasting than our discomfort, and they are not an escape from danger—they are the Truth, the Life and The Way, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

in, tern, ship...

2010-02-04T16:24:00.000-08:00

This internship has finally set sail.
Here is what I learned today, in spite of crying through supervision, sitting too long at the desk and getting the juice from a giant apple all over the sleeve of my dress shirt:
"Those who would work for good liturgy can sometimes think that it is an enterprise of interpreting: educating people so that they can translate the symbols into theological language. Not so. Good liturgy occurs when no explanations are needed, when the symbol and the story which surrounds it are done fully, faithfully, powerfully. This will happen when our rites, which are so rooted in all that it means to be human, and which tell all that it means to be Christian, are truly ours to do."
So just remember: even if you're not superhuman, at least you are human, and that is saying quite a lot, I suppose.
In short, please be yourself. It is a lot of work, but I'm asking nicely and optimistically that you can do it, knowing only
you can.

in case you hate

2010-01-29T14:40:00.000-08:00

your body today (even if you were just hating one pimple or one wrinkle or one lock of unruly hair--don't be afraid to admit if you were--I thought you should see this because I thought of you when I read it... I thought of everyone on the planet and I thought they should all read it
sooooo we'll start with you and call it a very good start, okay?)

"...woman cannot inhabit the space of this sanctifying reality and still remain invisible or effaced. When she enters this territory, she is given flesh and bone as her embodiment is affirmed and her agency is instantiated. She is, in short, given an envelope of grace to contain her. Because its intention is her ultimate flourishing, she can be said to have, in grace, a skin of her own (and God's) best desires. She is clothed in grace."
from Serene Jones' Feminist Theory and Christian Theology: Cartographies of Grace

Well, whaddya know--Clothed in grace... Cheese and Rice: tell your friends.

Don't worry

2010-01-24T14:37:00.000-08:00

No puppets were shamed in the making of this video...

this is a tricky one...

2010-01-16T23:08:00.000-08:00

Please proceed with caution.

“Once it happened, as I lay awake at night, that I suddenly spoke in verses, in verses so beautiful and strange that I did not venture to think of writing them down, and then in the morning they vanished; and yet they lay hidden within me like the hard kernel within an old brittle husk. Once it came to me while reading a poet, while pondering a thought of Descartes, of Pascal; again it shone out and drove its gold track far into the sky while I was in the presence of my beloved. Ah, but it is hard to find this track of the divine in the midst of this life we lead, in this besotted humdrum age of spiritual blindness, with its architecture, its business, its politics, its men! How could I fail to be a lone wolf, and an uncouth hermit, as I did not share one of its aims nor understand one of its pleasures? I cannot remain for long in either theater or picture-house. I can scarcely read a paper, seldom a modern book. I cannot understand what pleasures and joys they are that drive people to the overcrowded railways and hotels, into the packed cafes with the suffocating and oppressive music, to the Bars and variety entertainments to the World Exhibitions, to the Corsos. I cannot understand nor share these joys, though they are within my reach, for which thousands of others strive. On the other hand, what happens to me in my rare hours of joy, what for me is bliss and life and ecstasy and exaltation, the world in general seeks at most in imagination; in life it finds it absurd.” Steppenwolf by Herman Hesse

We have had such trouble lately and so much pain and with the heartache of trouble comes the reckoning with new ideas, new solutions to the same old problems.

I went to breakfast with Jackson yesterday. She said to the waiter, who is also the owner’s son and so not constrained by portion control, “I know this sounds absolutely ridiculous but can I have more gravy?” To which he responded, “That isn’t ridiculous, it’s just a little absurd.” And then his brother brought her a little bowl full of gravy. In the end, after he told us he wished all his customers could be like us, she poured most of the contents of that little bowl over the top of the already gravy-strewn sweet-yellow scrambled eggs, butter-grilled biscuits and slow-melting grated cheese. It had been a tough morning—hell, its been a tough year and yet I danced a little in my chair because in that moment she knew what she wanted, asked for it and then lavished it on herself, or at least her breakfast plate—and thoroughly. She scraped at the dredges with her teaspoon so nothing remained but a few stripes of gravy against the curve of the bowl.

She hadn’t meant to enjoy gravy, trust me on this one. In fact, she had only half expected that by some miracle she might enjoy maybe one little aspect of the breakfast and the gravy was nowhere near topping off that list. She really hadn’t thought it possible. She had needed the conversation but knew she didn’t need the gravy. And yet, somehow that gravy mattered like gravy had never mattered before.

God’s gift to a recovering anorexic like me comes in the form of women like Jackie who are not anorexic but it also sometimes comes in the knowing how gravy can spoil or redeem the meal, the day, the rest of your life but only if you ask for it. Only if you pour it over top of everything else like you give a damn.

The thing about those of us who often refuse to feed ourselves is that we know full well about food and what it does. We are not starving ourselves because we are stupid or ignorant. We think these things through; we concentrate on every lift of the jaw. Every grain of rice is a separate world, every pepper seed in a slice of pepperoni on a wedge of pizza is a private island exploding between the teeth, or at least that is the way my eating disorders and then reorders itself. Whether this is good or bad is simply not up for debate. In fact it is only dangerous when I try to label it with blacks and whites, goods or bads, to determine that lettuce is good, gravy is bad.

Food is more than food for us and you can think it is sad and pathetic if you want to. But I am alive because I am learning to deal with all the things that food can do to my body, or for it. I am still alive precisely because I am willing to live with my reality that bittersweet morsels and kernels of corn are more than proteins and fats for strengthening muscles and lubricating organs and yet also less than a heart attack waiting to happen or a gram of fat barely keeping me from death. I may have lost perspective on three squares a day, but I have found a way to connect with my desire for the way emptiness feels and the way fullness feels.

I may starve to death—we all might—but instead I am able to choose to face the fact that food is what it always has been for me: an emotional matter.

Think about it.

I’ll bet it’s the same way for you too.

Emotional eating is not uncommon… what I’m trying to tell you about is all the emotional not eating. I’m telling you about the deprivation that comes so surely to me. You seek the taste and texture of food in your mouth or the feeling of fullness in your belly while I am hoping to get by on a slice of toast. All I want is to will my digestive tract to be still and know. And it is not healthy, obviously, but all this noticing of nutritional components and digestive tracts is what it is, which is unavoidable on all accounts most of the time. It is possible to stop thinking of food like a crutch, stop resenting it, stop wondering if need is a weakness and start seeing intake and affectedness as a lovely opportunity.

The answer to this problem of trying to hold still, or limp along on a peanut butter spoon and a leaf of lettuce is to value all that I can do on a full tank. When I am thinking healthy thoughts about food, the gravies of the world are evidence that if I were to put that in my body I might find that I am alive and moving around. My need for food is followed by the desire for a specific food and then the acquisition and enjoyment of that food. It is probably the same for you.

It sounds like a long journey…like going around your ass to get to your elbow, cloying--I know. I’m sure most of you skip all that and just stuff a Ritz cracker into your mouth without ever worrying over it. But I am telling you there is so much more to this mess of mine. I require more than food that is food; I require something that will nourish my being, especially if I am going to go to all the work it takes to want it, get it, chew it, ingest it. And though I have never been proud of needing anything I am beginning to see that if I want more it isn’t the wanting that is aggravating, it is what I do with it that matters. Qnd what I am doing with the tiny desires for two bites of brownie and one wedge of your roasted red potatoes is keeping me alive, healthy, writing poetry and singing, praying, dancing, laughing and all those other great things I can do when I offer myself a few fat chow fun noodles and a splash of half and half.

I require complex recipes and in copious amounts. I am not just eating to fill an emptiness, I am eating to satisfy a desire; this is not just mechanics (I am not a machine), this is a real reckoning of my body with its greatest potential and it begins with knowing what I want. When I eat the butt of that zucchini bread or drink that glass of champagne it matters because I am able to think, choose, ask and receive; to taste, enjoy and be in and of (not merely about) the delight I am meant to yield.

So you see, food isn’t just a problem for the not-eating or over-eating among us, it is a riddle for all of us. When you shake hands with the bunch of bananas or roll the lime against the counter; when you suck on the caramel or stick your mustache into the head off a Guinness, when you crack a walnut against the table or lick the icing off the cupcake you are doing so much more than eating. Its no wonder the idea of putting food in my mouth is overwhelming at times. Dear God! We are supposed to do this three times a day?!

Americans are like that, though: putting things in, without giving it a second thought. And if we are among the best fed, we ought to start acting like it. We ought to remember that all this food at our disposal, all these choices and gratifications are our lot in life. Gratitude then becomes more than mere drudgery; food becomes more than a drug and more than a problem of local farms and organic materials (whatever that means these days).

These are the absurd, if not ridiculous requests we make every day for a candy bar, a decaf latte, a bag of chips or baked potato. So we had better embrace them, let them matter so much more than they might have yesterday. Like the Steppenwolf knows too well these were not absurdities when we imagined them, when we first desired them. They are only perceived as absurd in real life, not in our imaginations. We are in such denial about high levels of delight that we pretend gravy is just gravy, a coffee bean is just a coffee bean and we grind it up or pour it down the throat and never even think to taste it.

"More, more, more..!" we think. Put more in, Moron! That will make me full, that will satisfy! when really it is the passing it all off as absurd and meaningless that is so hazardous to your health. And even though it is absurd to bring another bit of gravy over, it is not absolutely ridiculous. Is it any real danger to enjoy it like Jackson did, to savor it the way a rare jewel is taken in: one facet at a time rather than glanced at and swallowed whole?

Good grief I just don’t understand you with your handfuls of chocolate chips because one is enough for me. Perhaps it is a kind of sick deprivation, but that is only a perhaps afterall. What I know for sure is that I am the recovering anorexic among you which means I can’t measure the cup of sugar the way you do—I measure sugar with gusto and probably always will. I can’t buy the value pack of boneless skinless without feeling a little skeptical and I definitely can’t butter bread the way you do because to me the way the pat slides melting into the cracks is more lovely like Niagara Falls and ought to be respected as a force of nature. But what I can do is imagine it, one bite at a time and on a good day, when I am not overwhelmed by the extremes—all this gluttony and starvation--I am sure of myself, rather than sure of the machinery I might be and I can think only of the pleasure it is to crunch one greasy bite of hashbrowns or salt and salsa one tortilla chip.

So if you see me agonizing over one shot of espresso or the last bite of a brownie remember that I am in love with the possibility it holds: by its very existence and the miracle of what it could do. Or if you catch me denying myself the slice of cheese I wanted with that apple wedge you will sigh and know that I simply couldn’t work it out just now but if we’re supposed to do this three times a day perhaps I’ll get it right later tonight.

I know you're going to check the skinnytree today

2010-01-10T09:15:00.000-08:00

or tomorrow so I'm putting this here because I mean it and I don't think you are the only one who needs to think about it:

I know it sounded like bullshit when he said, "Its not you, its me" but what if it was him? What if you really are good, (great even!) and what if you are enough and he wasn't?

I dunno, I'm just saying... because I really like you, so its difficult for me to believe you aren't good enough. Even if you are thinking you aren't (which is fine) I'm not ...so I'll just hold onto that for you for now, and one day you'll be walking down the street and you'll think to yourself, "Hey! I am good! I've been good enough for a long time! Ha!" and you'll call me and tell me and I'll stand upon the nearest park bench or bar stool and do victory arms in the air, like a gymnast saluting the judges because you just landed the triple cheese nut twizzle half backasswards, but I won't say, "I told you so." And I won't be surprised and you won't have to feel ashamed that you didn't believe it all this time because even if you didn't let yourself, you showed me enough of yourself to let me believe it for you... which, by the way, is the way you really are and that is definitely good enough already.

And since we are all worried about being, and being good, and being good enough
and since there are lots of men in our lives who may or may not own up to their responsibilities to participate in relationships with us
don't confine the above self-esteem crisis to mix-gender love affairs: take liberties with the pronouns once again, dear reader! Imagine your father's face, if not your mothers! Imagine your last boss or even God, if you would be so bold... Let's run a few experiments, shall we and I guess we'll just see what happens... (Do let me know if you run into trouble or some kind of total depravity style theological issues--the skinnytree can handle that for you, its the least we can do after pos(t)ing such difficult questions).

this one is for you, D*rock!

2009-12-20T12:20:00.000-08:00

I should explain to you that sometimes lately I go back and rewrite these posts. And its probably annoying but I swear it is worth it

Because I realized today I thought I should put this photo here: it is the face I make at jenfox when she is really upsetted and needs to see it on my face that I believe her about big problems. it also looks like the face I make when I know how to trust you and hope you trust me because we are both here, present as well as we can be and this shit is serious but that is okay.

And then she made a little book for me and somewhere around the 20th page it goes a little like thisish: "moods don't last. It is their chief charm."-Oscar Wilde
and you have to figure that if the OWilde is going to go on about something like that, then it is probably just fine for me to encourage you to accomplish a great many things (like coping, staying married, keeping up with the news or fashions, writing decent prose, going out looking crazy, believing confidence is the new black, etc.) I have not yet managed well. And then Jackson borrowed another book of Reihnard poetry, because that is pretty much her signature move by now. John Reinhard writes

Last Ride Down the Whiskey
"So arfully do the Fates untwist
the threads of our life."-Montaigne
If herons spoke in ways you could
write down, what would they say?
I am afraid
of heights. Of the tickling
feather. Of blue
weather that washes our colors right
out of the sky.
This is my
translation. In front of me
a heron scares a few feet above
river. The Whiskey's brown
from swamp creeks and soil
that would not stay. The heron
teases water with strokes of wing,
then lights a hundred yards ahead, always
solitary except in a few odd dream
where I've seen the mass of herons, thousands
of great blues huddled on marsh, necking
like teenagers at the drive-in movies
before the cost of land went up
and owners went bust.
The herons mate for life. Then fly off
alone, one of them to guide me
down this river one more time.

Everything bends at the spear of land
called Widows Jump where wives remarry the spirits
of husbands who fell under the wieght of trees.
My oars settle in whirlpool. I wrap it
around me for an instant then pull
hard at the river.
The heron leads me further.
The high water darkens. It was here
Pere Marquette looked to the savage
for salvation. Columbus tried to sail
over the edge of the earth. And I wonder,
What death is it that kills us?
What is it
that makes us well? I've heard the land
is rife with cures. The healing scars
and trees that I could name like sons.
Medicine transmuted into stars that shiver
before me on the rutted water.
I have lived
most of my life and have little idea
what stays. I take a long drink of the Whiskey.
Let it flow through the channels of my veins.
Then I pierce the surface, once again hope
to propel myself forward to where
the heron seems to break through
the night on extraordinary wing.

~~~~~

And now a little intermission poetry and some musics about drinking, or not drinking, or not swallowing at least (try not to let your dirty little mind wander too much over the terrain of that last bit, okay?) in the form of this, a little poem I made today when a couple really good things happened at the same time (Joe L sent a link to the video below and D*Rock "Hey there, Kid!" Norris showed up not like a Christmas but perhaps a following miracle) and I don't know who to aim at for that... so I'll just issue glad tidings and introduce him around (Derek, this is everybody I like; Everybody, this is the man who introduced me to Rainer Marie Rilke) and we'll all carry on according to something we may have imagined about a possible normal.

Is it really you, after all this time?
I spit hot chocolate
in your general direction
because I was gulping it down,
drinking it in, right before everything
and couldn't contain myself
when it all got crazy.

we're up to 4 reasons

2009-12-17T14:21:00.000-08:00

4 ways to get out of bed, same quantity as we have seasons... and this one goes for when you're a little edgy and feeling up to the big tasks, like biting the big apple of your troubled, stubbled life-story geography.

I'm a little obsessed with this song lately. Dangerous, I know. Especially given that I've never been anywhere near the Empire State, geographically speaking that is. But get a good look at Alicia: she means it. And the JayZizzle, who's gonna stop him? They sing this like they know what it takes, what it means when the lights of the city mean love and hate at the same time and in my mind, if not in theirs, it doesn't have to be about a place I've never been, because it feels like a place we've all been.

As thirty approaches I think more and more about the things I want to do and see, the places that seem to call my name and have done for some time. I think more seriously about clearing out all the shit so I can get what I need. I think of the way they talk about the bums and brats in San Francisco, the street sounds and ghetto superstars in Oakland: talking tough, looking tougher, scrapping, running, screaming across the double decker Bay Bridge or suicide lanes of the Golden Gate and getting, getting gone.

I have big plans to see for myself, you know?
Intiendes?
This is una jovena planning to get some things done, si comprendes o no.

Or at least that is why I got out of bed today... we'll see about tomorrow.

reason #3 to get out of bed

2009-12-12T13:03:00.001-08:00

In case you are heading out to the skating rink and can't remember your favorite song to request.

whoever posted this on youtube says: "ayeee, lol, yall are funny. some of things this song reminds you of is crazy. everybody leave a comment a say what this song reminds you of, or what you were doing with your life when this song was..."

memories have been creeping in, seeping in lately, and with gusto and obviously the poems come too.

After thanksgiving
Remember the roses pruned to look like trees replaced by junipers--no less prickly?
No. This is not a question
although my memories often pose themselves as such,
their voices lifting upward at the end like a branch, inquisitive and question
able to throw us all into a reflection pool of quaking and quandry (query and qwerty).
The scene of it a well tended English garden...
Or! thanksgiving leftovers wrapped in a gentle tent of aluminun foil
O! those roses, arms akimbo
resting fleshy flower fists on their healing
hips protecting their thorny fingertips bossing gently--don't touch they say,
offering blossoms to noses not hands
And I grabbed anyway at that soft flesh,
shaking hands and came away clenching blood
red petals good for tossing to the winds of the transatlantic trade route.
A young chemist said to me today "the right mix of practicality and theatricality"
I blew my nose into the scarf
around my neck like an unkempt gypsy
asked do you dance and he said no but I could, then accidentally composed a poem, myself.
~~~~
I do not deal well with fear, really none of us do.
And my insides shrink and it is like looking into the sun.
Make no mistake: loneliness does kill. It has killed other people but it hasn't killed me.
It hasn't even killed the best parts of me and I have been living with it for a long time, much longer than anyone I thought I would. But I am afraid of it nonetheless. And I am sure it is some kind of default or if not de facto then at least a fault. I am afraid it will always find me, catch me off guard and I won't remember any of my skills or tricks for dealing with it.
I don't remember even though I know
how to write about it, sing along about it, use it, embrace it, wrestle it to the ground,
drive it to my mother's house and leave it at her front porch, where it belongs, where it came from...
and leave a note that says you taught this to me, brought this to me but it is not good for me so please keep it here and never send it back to me.
Or mail it to my father's mailbox with a letter enclosed that says I learned this
from the absence we both abhor and regret and it is no longer useful so just take it from me, put it in storage with my other childhood toys: the nightmares I clung to even when you worked so hard to fend them off with your snores as I slept against your chest, and the security blankets and cigarettes and road trips and death defying fights you never knew about.
Or perhaps I shouldn't write to my parents, I should just write loneliness and tell it off:
Dear loneliness you are not the only feeling. You are not even the biggest feeling, you are just the scariest and I refuse to keep you; you cannot stay here. Do your best but I will win this game.

Even as I write a cat stranger keeps me company, pretending to explore the frozen fallen leaves but really he is watching me. Then I scratch my knuckle on the cement stair chair beneath me when I shifted my weight so my butt will freeze evenly. it hurt but not that bad and then bled all over everything.

Yesterday was awful. Most of the days have been awful because the difficult conversations keep coming also.
Tom Lombardo, my sixth grade teacher gave me this advice: Look to the horizon.
Look up, he told me. Elevating your head sparks or triggers a response in your body and you will feel better. So its not just a Native American suggestion--it is scientific.

A tilt of the head means everything, changes everything.

~~~~
Love seems like a reason to hold off on the apocalypse, don't you think?
Just hold on one more day to one more lovely memory of an apocalypse like thing that didn't ruin us:
The Leonid meteor shower comes once a year, do you know about this? Apparently a comet left behind some of itself and every year we pass through the mess as we orbit the sun.
We went out one year to watch it over the tops of a Gravenstein apple orchard. We looked up over and past the horizon and waited for all those shooting stars. It wasn't the end of the world but it marks an explosion of meaning. It wasn't an answer to any of our questions but I still remember it fondly--as though maybe one day I will ask a question and the answer will come to me like that memory or in it perhaps. I'm not sure what we were meant to see that night. We hoped for stars to fall like rain (which would have been a terrifying thing and would have caused a hole in the very bubbling layers that protect this crazy blue-green orbiting rock we call home) because we had imagined such a thing was possible. Those were days when anything was possible (life and death by fireball!) and that fact too is woven into the skies of the memory... all that possibility we didn't know we imagined. Perhaps we were disappointed, but the memory is so comforting in spite of that because, I tell myself, we went.
We hoped for more than we saw and I am still hoping one day to see it: the Leonid or some other miracle like that in the middle of the night.

Santos

2009-12-06T15:30:00.000-08:00

There is the idea that even a tiny amount of nurture can start to unravel neglect.

So I have been lighting the prayer candles and muddling through the spanish prayers on them.
Santa Clara (always pictured with a lantern), ángel de la guarda (usually huge and beautiful in the paintings), La Virgin de Guadalupe (The Mother of Mexican Identity) stand proudly on the bookshelf and I sometimes think they are glowing even when they aren't on fire which I think means that I believe those candles are helping--no matter what.

As you may know today is St. Nicholas Day. I have a friend who has never had a real Christmas Tree. He admitted recently that there were years when his father simply lit a Santa Candle and called it good.

And that got me thinking...

There is a man in our congregation who spends every Sunday of the year looking eerily like Santa Claus in a choir robe. He has been known to dress up like St. Nicholas upon request and carry a basket of candy canes around during coffee hour.

As annoying as these holidays are I can't help but tell you that the story of today's Christmas miracle (yes, I suppose I do believe in Christmas Miracles even if I hate Christmas--I really like miracles) is about him.

During the children's word Pr. Bev dressed one of the acolytes in a glowing red robe and satin costume mitre. She explained the way Bishop Nicholas of Turkey snuck gold coins into stockings hung out to dry so that even the poorest children of the fourth century underworld wouldn't have to go hungry on his watch. She then led all these postmodern, anti-traditional, sufficiently clothed and fed children to the Narthex where they each abandoned one shoe, just to see what would happen.
All those kids in sock and shoe marched back into service, across icy December sanctuary tile and then eventually up to the cushy purple carpet around the altar. I have to admit, they seemed relieved to finally be on the polyester weave and they knelt at the communion rail with their families as if celebrating Eucharist insufficiently clad on the coldest day of the year was, if not the most familiar or holiest way, then at least the most reminiscent-of-snacks-at-home way to deal with the host.

Just before the benediction the children were invited to stand around the advent wreath one last time before bolting out the double doors to retrieve solo sneakers and lonely patten leather. Pr. Hoffman told them the light from the wreath must be carried out into the neighborhood and who better to carry it than the half-shod? He lit two scrawny white candles from the two giant blue tapers on the wreath and handed them to acolyte line leaders.

I scooped up a tiny four year old and we both pointed our index fingers in this little light of mine fashion. We began the recession and I heard the benediction through the speakers so I used my light to cross her, in the name of the Father Son and Holy Spirit as her tiny shoeless foot bounced against my thigh.
I thought of casual worship, and how easily one shoe is so often lost in a closet. I thought of cold toes and Mother Goose's Diddle Diddle Dumpling and how often I slept with socks on because I was cold and lonely in bed, even as a child. I thought of the rare luxury of warm extremities in my childhood and the pain of frostbite. I remembered the sight of my great Aunt Hett's foot: missing the big toe. I knew these children felt lopsided and vulnerable and thought of desperate parents hoping against hope that their son had miraculously changed his socks for the first time this week.

When I finally looked up toward the Narthex door, I saw him.

Saint Nicholas stood there, large as life under the florescent lights, wearing the robe and mitre we had seen earlier on one of our favorite 9 year olds. I noticed his face, red and a little tense but not angry. He seemed to sigh, or almost heave and then rested his forehead, just for a moment along the curve of his bamboo shepherd's crook and clenched his eyes closed in a long blinking moment. He was regal but surprisingly emotional and it dawned on me that the sight of the children bearing these little index finger lights, coming at him reverently rather than wildly, sure of our purpose and pomp, in awe of his very existence and trusting in his benevolence and existence, hoping he was real and generous... it must have been overwhelming to see belief wash over those little faces.

He seemed to clench back tears and whether any actually fell I will never be mean enough to ask. I don't need to know about that because what I do know is this: it made perfect sense that he would cry at the sight of us. It made perfect sense that we meant that much to him. It made sense. As we came near to him with pure adoration in our eyes he seemed to feel the weight of our hopes and his hopes for us. It made sense that something in him would release and he would be overcome with emotion.

I leaned into the little bird alighted in my arms and told her, "There he is. Do you see him? I think he is feeling a lot of feeling right now because he sees us."
She looked up into my face and filled the space between us: proclaiming in a voice equal to that with which the official benediction had been offered, she let out the most confident little "Okay!" I have ever heard.

There is just something about Saints, especially Nicholas. There is something to be said for the way we light candles in their honor or under their portraits and raise a firey hope toward them. We point our petitions or best efforts in their direction, we march toward them in stocking feet and hope they will look down on us with tears in their eyes and be overcome with compassion and holy desire for what it means that we are approaching.

So if you still have that Santa Candle, go ahead and light that motherfucker up, give the jolly bastard something to smile about, light a fire in his belly because even the tiniest movement toward an adulterated version of Holiday Hope or Sacrament can move something inside you to remember the way all this mess was started so beautifully long ago.

And then there is this:
all these seasonal greening (decking the halls with boughs of holly and all that rot we are supposed to do this week) are really based on ancient Druid-derived, pagan rituals. Yule logs, Christmas Trees and Wreathes garner their status from the same traditions that taught us to plant the Yew and Holly Trees strategically around the church property to fend off evil. There are things we do this time of year even if we don't know why and it can really suck ass. But putting ourselves through the motions is bearable if we look for hope in the details (notice the smell of the cedar boughs, the sap on the pinecone stem, the bits of bark the yule log sheds, hope the holly berries don't bleed even for all their nestling among the prickly leaves, listen for the sound of needles falling off the dried out tree we dragged into the house). It might be all we can manage so it has to count for something.

be good

2009-11-29T18:24:00.000-08:00

Learning how to listen is about discovering more meaning behind less words.
Papa used to tell us that "it would all come out in the wash" but we are second language learners (thank God) and the cliches are reappropriated more often than not (read: another reason for gratitude).
So when you read it you probably thought he was referring to stains or filth but I figured, even very youngly, that he meant that things would even out somehow. He said it so often and each time I found myself hoping (trusting him, really)
that all the injustice in the world will somehow get stirred around,
tumbled until its head aches,
and its wonky sense of fairness will be adequately flopped over so that when we take the laundry out of the machines and give it a good shake and fold, we would find it was all there but a little more clearly. I thought he meant that the little lost socks caught in the sheets would be found or the coins would fall out of the rich man's pockets and I would find them at the bottom of the dryer drum and I would be rich.

But even more often than he told me about the wash, he told me
Be Good.
and sometimes I think he means I should behave myself
you know: listen to wisdom, weigh the facts first, tell the truth or wait quietly, be careful, obedient and do my best.
Other times I think he means I should be good
you don't know: sometimes listening is impossible, the facts betray the feelings that follow, the truth doesn't arrive in time, careful is a myth and being obedient is not the best I can do.
These days neither of us knows what it will mean for me to be good.
Instead we trust that I am good, that
I am the good I was created to be and that I should be that, only that, just that.
I should just be.
Be myself, even if it means I will be by myself, I will at least be with myself and he will be thinking of me with a far off loving look in eyes below a troubled brow, and lit up the way they were even only by the very sight of me, the thought of me before he heard me cry for the first time, before I had done anything to earn his trust or break his heart or
make him laugh or make him cry,
lit up by the hope he has always had that I will heed his words and whatever they might mean to the woman I have become in his care
which is why he keeps telling me--now that I am too old for admonition his words have become premonition:
and I hear him say it like a sort of benediction sending me out with a blessing to go out there and be all the good I want to be because there is a lot of good out there for me
a lot of good to be.

feeling sorry, and other reasons for mixing metaphors

2009-11-20T15:08:00.000-08:00

I am sorry, but not regretful
I am feeling sorry
but
These days you can't tell the victim in me that there is a whole lot left to lose. As I get used to all the ways people victimize and are victims the more I think about how much we have all lost along the way.
And I realize
I keep close to what could hurt me
confusing it with what might love me.

What might love be, and where?
There is no way to stop asking. I would be hopeless and lost without this question to anchor or rudder. It is the compass and the Northern Star hanging low over Alaska's Anchorage, the very place I was born: under this question.
And you, my beloved, are caught up in it. Between the sails and the stars. Like the youngest stow away, crawling through the potato sacks of my story and loving every minute that takes us further from the familiar shore.
Insight is not dispersed with any kind of regularity.
the nerves and anger and anxiety will have to be managed, or at least embraced, as gentle friends come to warn--the chorus in a Greek tragedy, telling what we keep forgetting about the story and the ways it will go. But they are no more than that. They are not the players, we are, more important than what they portend or forebear.
We are looking toward the end of the performance because endings are a great accountability.

So I have been thinking more about endings and reworking what I think about death.
The death of a hatred is called love.
The death of night means the world keeps turning.
The death of a savior means resurrection.
Death is not the end of the story. That is not how the story ends.
The death of despair is hope
The death of hunger is fullness
The death of a tree in all its carbon glory is a fire-a pentecost
and flames lick the heads of those called to hold one another,
hold one another's feet to the fire.
The death of a broken union is called a divorce. Death is a great accountability at times. It keeps track of faults and ending and frailties and beginnings. It is a vengeance brought about by a God who chooses life, makes it go on or go out.

So, no: I'm not thinking about suicide. I'm thinking about the way death is a part of life and that knowing this makes all the difference.
There are so many things to see and find and places to put my self
my whole self
just as soon as I get it all there, find it there, right where I want to be and even though I thought I'd never make it to 30, or past that, I am excited and really hoping that I might!

All this time I thought I was afraid of the one big death and so I was living all the tiny deaths. I am, if I am honest, rarely afraid of dying because I see it so far off. Instead I am afraid of all the little deaths along the way: the ways I let go my biggest hopes, waking dreams and deepest feelings and best thoughts. Those are the deaths that seem to finish, seem like life is finished or at least fucking with me. These are only the little endings and mediocre dead ends that leave me maimed or scarred but very very scared.

I've apologized too many times
wanting desperately to make loving me into less of a choice
for you,
to make you love
anything or everything because I wanted you to love me too--
not best or first but at least, at last.
I hoped it would be the last thing:
that you would love me.
That in some final desperate move you would love me
but now I see that I could be first in some
One's mind,
part of the first thought and the last thought.
That You can
see me arrive and think first (feel first)
that I am here, that I, me, my self
(not only my faults, missing parts
jettisoned, triaged ambitions)
but my best whole broken mess is here.
That
You don't have to stop thinking of yourself--You can hold on to yourself and hold on, and
still see me clearly.

It is as if there are hundreds of thoughts in the room and
you know there are
but they are not overwhelming because we are curious about each other--not displacing each other.

A chemical reaction happens when so many tiny pieces react to one another:
I will learn to do this too::
to see your ideas and calculations on the chalkboard and among all of Einstien's equations choose to let yours matter, not before my story or my work but alongside it, part of it
helping it along toward our greatest discovery--
the great equation--
the balance of all things bonded after breaking down because we added just enough of some mysterious thing to what was
compounded since it all began and there will be breaking, splitting, new bonds and perhaps smoke or combustion from the friction of our
mutual admiration.
If we observe over night, donning safety goggles and tending the burners
we may end up
with nothing but the powerful powder of ashes: a new thing from ancient things
and recognize it as
love.
You know the score: From ashes I have called you, dust to dust and all that
and I think those ashes from that story must be some fancy goddamn ashes to have composed something so perfectly as
us.
Think powdered sugar next time you hear those familiar words, think a dusting of pixies: a little dirty, sticky, messy, unexpected, earthy and fantastic muddy, wild and grimy stuff from which we arose
but in the end when the final word came: it is good
resounded.

reason #2 to get out of bed

2009-11-19T10:56:00.000-08:00

Don't watch the lyrics: there are discrepancies which distract. We're all going down to see him in all his dredlocked glory: Saturday 8p QCafe Interbay--Do come!

It's already out there

2009-11-16T20:28:00.000-08:00

Remember the article I posted? I'll repost it, because you might gain from rereading it, it is really important to me. And since Kristie, the brilliant, has followed me here, and she was the one who recommended Gottman years ago, when I was too scared to read it, it seems only right that we follow her sage advice!

"Til Disrespect Do Us Part
Couples therapist John Gottman predicts marriage futures.

MY HUSBAND TOM and I fought most of the way to the Dr. John Gottman lecture.

I don’t recall what the argument was about. I vaguely remember he was annoyed that I hadn’t gotten the Subaru’s headlight replaced, which I guess I must’ve agreed to do. I was annoyed that he expected me, a car dope, to accomplish something even remotely automotive. He carped that I wasn’t parking in the best lot. I carped that he was checking his BlackBerry for email instead of talking to his wife. And he’d forgotten something in his office, dammit, so we were going to be late to the “Making Marriage Work” lecture.

As it turned out, we weren’t late: A knot of people clogged the Town Hall entrance, waiting to pay $50 a couple—during a recession—to hear the nation’s pioneer in relationship science dispense the marriage secrets he’d spent a career uncovering. Thirty some years ago, as a young clinical psychologist, he set out to study the relationship dynamics and concurrent physiological responses of married couples. One newlywed pair at a time would spend a full 24 hours in a lushly appointed apartment with a placid view of the Montlake Cut, discussing matters of both agreement and conflict, while Gottman wired them for heart rate and brain function and numerous other physical variables.

Over months and years Gottman and his grad students tested and retested these same couples, gradually amassing a pile of data on the behaviors that make marriages work—and those that make them weak. As the study ripened and some couples divorced, the scientist began to see that certain behaviors could reliably predict a split. Upon this data, Dr. John Gottman built a research institute, a self-help book empire, a thriving therapeutic practice, and an esteemed academic name. His therapeutic superhero skill? Divorce Predictor.

“Is that like horse whisperer?” Tom asked as we found seats. We looked around, suddenly self-conscious. Our marriage seemed pretty healthy to me, aside from a short list of ongoing differences—we call them Fight A, Fight B, and Fight C—and the occasional argument about nothing, as in the car ride over. Generally we dwell in a playful, enriching, and loving union.

But just being at a “Making Marriage Work” lecture felt like wearing a name tag that said, “Hello! We’re Circling the Drain!” Of course the one couple we knew in the huge hall happened to be sitting just across the aisle, and looked equally busted when we said hi. “Dragged here, too, were you?” Tom joshed, socking the husband manfully on the shoulder. We all smiled, admitting it was the wives’ idea, but that both husbands were genuinely interested in what this Gottman had to say. Plus, the man told us, they had just received jarring news from the marriage front. “You remember our neighbors, the Smiths?” (Not really “the Smiths,” you understand.) We did—great people, very solid, together forever. “He had an affair. The marriage is done.”

The lights flickered and we stumbled back to our seats. The Smiths? I read my own thoughts in Tom’s expression: If it can happen to them, is anyone’s marriage safe? Could the Divorce Predictor have seen that one coming?

The good doctor spent the next two hours establishing that yeah…he probably could have. Gottman told his audience that four neon signs herald marital doom: criticism (“There is no such thing as constructive criticism”), defensiveness, the “shutting-out” Gottman calls stonewalling, and contempt. Of these, contempt—the act of relating to one’s partner from a position of superiority, whether by calling him an idiot or correcting her grammar—is the most destructive and the number-one predictor of divorce. Not only does contempt eat like sulfuric acid through a marriage, it’s physically destructive. Emerging research reveals that contempt among intimates measurably corrodes the recipient’s immune system. Couples who practice these sorts of marriages Gottman calls the Disasters.

At the other end of the spectrum are the Masters, who through a thousand positive moments build a culture within their marriage of appreciation and respect. They look for things to praise in their partner. They say, “Thanks for doing the dishes tonight,” and “You look so sexy in that color.”

It’s no great mystery how the Masters do this, Gottman explains; it’s Friendship 101. They ask their partner questions about their desires and dreams, then remember the answers. They learn to identify their partner’s bids for emotional connection, then respond in kind. Unlike the therapeutic modalities in vogue when Gottman started his research, where couples were urged to air their resentments with each other—sometimes employing foam baseball bats for emphasis—Gottman found that what makes marriage work is precisely the opposite. Relationships work to the extent that partners are gentle with each other.

Gottman spoke with candor and wit—the wise elder statesman in a city unusually crowded with relationship experts, sociologist Pepper Schwartz to sex columnist Dan Savage. Make no mistake, Gottman declared: Crappy interactions happen in all marriages, good and bad. Successful marriages are not bastions of romantic bliss; they’re pretty good partnerships peppered with regrettable moments. Indeed, 69 percent of the married couples he studied wrestled with the same problems the entire life of their marriage. Fight A, Fight B, and Fight C. The only difference was that the Masters dealt with them functionally and respectfully.

At the end Gottman opened the floor, and a man asked if there was a variable to predict good marriages. “There is,” Gottman said. “Men who are willing to accept influence from women.” From across the aisle my friend caught my eye. He means men who work up interest in a marriage lecture because they know it means something to their wives, I heard her thinking. Tom looked at me and dramatically rolled his eyes.

And took my hand."

So, it seems contempt is to blame for so much of the mess I am in these days. And if I don't want to place blame on just one person, and I don't want one person to have to take full responsibility for any one thing, or everything, I think we can all share in the sadness and grieve mightily.

There are those of you who are keeping a close eye on the dissolution of my marriage and I want to thank you, honestly. Even though I am quite embarrassed I am also quite grateful.

The good and rainy State of Washington will be issuing us a divorce because, this is their way of putting it, and I am embracing it fully: the marriage is irretrievably broken.
And it is time to think of unspoken broken hopes, broken dreams, broken ties, broken hearts, broken homes and to cry until I fear the rain won't stop until I do. New disappointments arrive everyday like rain clouds covering our little city.

Things unravel slowly-- sometimes so slowly that none of us is able to articulate what is happening as it happens. We are not the newscasters and anchorwomen, we are, I'm afraid not receiving news of our own story until it is almost too late. I hope you won't feel entirely betrayed to be reading this here, but I am afraid it has already appeared on FaceBook and this is, albeit an insufficient invitation for dialogue, the best I can do to undermine my own contempt for internet exposure of tender subjects.

If you need to talk I am getting pretty good at that (writing is easier for me, but it will never be as thorough as a good conversation) so do call or let me know how you would like me to reach you and I will do my best.

That is quite enough for now, except for this one thought that surfaced late last night... it is sort of breaking news:
After a few good hours of anger and difficult discussion a trustworthy voice came poking through the telephone and said, in response to my broken little thanks
that voice said that I am deserving... and it really got me thinking about what I might deserve.
And this is what I came up with:
Maybe true love isn't the opposite of false bravado love as I may have assumed for so long. Maybe it means the love I receive and feel and give and want is more true than all the hate I was taught to believe about myself. And perhaps, the idea that we are deserving of love is truth more solid than the idea that we deserve to be hated. Maybe love is the truth about all of us.

First time around, wintering in Seattle

2009-11-15T12:50:00.000-08:00

I found the journal from the Fall of 1996 and it is mind boggling so I am setting some of it down here.

October 29, 1996
halitosis and ding dongs.
Contrast is as strong as reality.
My own boring little slide show.
"It is okay to alter the facts to convey the point."
And suburbia wails I can't breathe but this goddamn cigarette smoke slurred breath icicles shit frozen into cement parking lots and I never learned but inflate the big city and the trees taught me to wail. Where am I?
[I'm not sure why these are out of order]
September 5, 1996
I am an orange. seed ...quite in the center...
I am an ant.
I am a bubble.
I am a bees wing.
My HEAD is a bubble.
My foot is a paintbrush.
My dance the painting.
A dragon fly wing
My words are orange leaves...they fall to the ground.
The rocket push off
crazy fire sputter long tail
thick fountain pressure earth... push and push and push and
strawberry red acid air spurts bottom...

giraffe.

September 10
Sometimes I imagine. Sometimes I can run. & it is good & it is beautiful & far & clear crisp motion. My legs stretch and my feet stretch. I blow. and its down this hall and out this street and real and mindless and good.
... If I could throw myself into a floor so lightly I come back up like in water. & my hands he can imagine my hands he can see them and I am not alone. He sees me and it is only good.
...
Do you hear me? Embrace means grab and hold for a long time--long after you let go.

September 11
Selling kisses ins't such a big deal. Not a bad idea. Bad deal, big idea. Everybody wants one. Follow that sucking heart of yours it just might scrape you off yourself adn push you into feeling some one else's lips. Not just yours. Flapping. Now that I'd like a kiss I notice other people's mouths. not in not out. drop out.
Ben sells drugs. Maybe not maybe he just buys them. whole pounds at a time. I eat too much Ice Cream. My drug of choice. Talking in my sleep. I had a dream
I said, "I feel sick. I don't want to go. & I really did feel sick. Sick like a headache in my stomach. Like a slinky is stuck in my esophagus.
...
Ever been so damn in love that you don't know if you ever weren't?
Ultimate control is determining reaction.
...
My children are going to have a graffiti artist for a father. Someone who is addicted to his art of breaking the law. Addicted to the law of breaking art is worse. Alcohol is worse than cigarettes. Cigarettes are worse than pot. Pot is worse than Ice Cream. Meat is Murder. Tee shirts Kill.
...
Sarai Comes home. She is my opposite and my counter part & I want everyone who knows me to know her. She is nicaraguense ahorita. Mi Corazon. Te. Ven aqui Gringa. Gringiuta. Saraita. Share my space. See my face. Share my house and live and work and silently make everything a little more how it was. Tell mom she is funny by laughing with me. Laugh and go and remember i am yours like your long brown hair. I am your baby sister and I love you love you and love you and I am sorry I don't say it. I know you know it. I know you love me.

[and this next bit is, I think, Quite Shocking:]
September 21
If I were me and you were too,
I'd have no one to kiss
and on those days I drag around,
I'd not have you to miss.
and then when you would need a hug
There'd be no one to give
and if I ran away from home
I'd have no place to live.
We'd dress alike and think the same
perhaps we'd only have one name
I would grow so tired of you
I'd often cry--but you would too
and in that case
who'd comfort who?

[the form is much too silly for the content and that is quite upsetting, if you think of how alone I must have been to have written it at all--High School is such a bizarre time and it seems obvious in retrospect: I had nothing to anchor any of it not a person or place, just myself. Ouch.]

"Poets are always taking the weather so personally. They're always sticking their emotions in things that have no emotions."-JD Salinger

[next to that quote the lovely Andy Barker, my wild english teacher for that brief semester time at Shorecrest High School, wrote two exclamation marks, just so you know]

September 23
Stop talking to me! I don't need anyone to tell me what to do or ask me questions. Ask me how I feel and you'll probably receive a stupid lie answer anyway. "Fine, thank you." what I really think is: " I'm okay if I don't think about how nice it would be to press my chin against your shoulder. To feel your whole arm."

September 25
What if Isis had looked just awful in that big head piece? I think I would have. My neck isn't long enough.
"...we intellectuals are all screaming of a speech without words that utters the inexpressible and gives form to the formless." Herman Hesse.
Nate didn't know who Ray Bradbury is. Who's fault is that? Not mine-I helped.

September 29
I don't know what time it is because I left my wristwatch in the breast pocket of the shirt he wore yesterday. This is home. This beautiful home. Those apple trees dripping apples. one grape for every tear on those graping vines.
"Pretty rare when you get on a plane without any problems, eh?"
Yeah. Except that this time the problem is that I am catching this flight.

October 1
I know his whole body hurst and it makes mine hurt too like inside something hits against my collar bone and the pain vibrates up and down to you think its my heart breaking?

Some of us are those poor kids who come to suburbia to take advantage of the advantages. we know more and pain like they never will. ... I know the sad stories people sing in any song. I can feel. and when we find each other and recognize each other for who we are we feel safe in the danger we have known.

October 17
"Aren't you cold out here?"-some lady
yes, hold me.

November 4
Picasso invented collage is he lucky nothing existed?
Oh dramatic dog words of times pushed into normalcy.

December 2
Don't forget that those rags are not who you are
just tell people about your goals

December 10
I don't feel good.
My nose is a cork and my sinus is a series of streets in a traffic jam and my eyes are windows when someone opens the door on the airplane and the glass on the front of the overn when the cake is expanding. and my muscles are old newspaper rubber bands found in the gutter sprinkler spit.

January 3
Emma you are the sun and I am the sky and somtimes you just fill me up. Love, Abigail

January 6
I haven't any great stories to tell. No life lessons today. Instead I ponder the existence of the truth. Everybody makes his own.
I read your letter about crying often. ...But I cry and don't know how to stop. It isn't right. How does one know when to stop? You are a wise thing. Tell me.
It is far too warm in this room. My tummy rubs against rocks but I don't want to eat anything. You are tea and I am hot cocoa.

phew.

the kind of hope I'm having

2009-11-10T17:04:00.000-08:00

Lizzle commissioned a poem about this problem I am having because she thought it would help.

See, she wants me to be able to locate my hope, hope for myself, not for anyone else, just for myself.

And I thought of loss and a time when I was hopeful about loss.

I couldn't tell anyone at the time because they would have thought I was crazy or awful for hoping in death.

But I am not crazy, I am alive. And though alive might often be mistaken for crazy because of all the sweating and huffing and puffing and emotional volatility (as under control as it often is) that is associated (and rightly so!) with being alive, crazy and alive are two very different ideas.

So here is a little poem about the kind of hope I am having.

Mind you, it isn't the kind of greeting card hope you want to send a friend, it is not the big kind of hope that gets you out of bed in the morning unless

you are like me:

the kind of person who is only willing to get out of bed for tiny, broken down hopes like Ficus trees and falling leaves and

maybe the hope that you will be all right even if you are caught dancing in the kitchen with the Albanian cook: When my boss peeked in the window we were really getting down, shaking our heads and hips and our hands were raised over our heads and it was the kind of dancing you can't just stop because you are caught because we began laughing in rhythm with the song and our bodies kept moving, we kept moving--we were up and out of bed and we kept moving.

The Hope

When you died you were wearing a pink nightgown and looking quite vulnerable as the rigor crept through you.

Your pale skin had a power over us, what was left

of your thinning hair refused to rest

against the pillow.

You were the dead with a bed head

and you would have laughed at yourself, the way you always had.

When it happened

They said you weren’t alone, and I suspect

there may have been a nurse in the room when the last little bit of life fell

out of you, rolled across the floor in search of another haunt.

Maybe a memory of family lodged in the corner chaos of your brain

finally showed itself:

a picture of you with your sister perhaps

keeping you company.

Then eventually

we arrived, gathering like seagulls on the cliff

Standing over,

your little brittle body—a precipice—and we, forced to jump toward

(your) death,

the next best thing in life.

Suddenly unsure of my wings,

I began pacing, back and forth, near the rocky razor edge of self-doubt

And fell into the grieving question cycle:

Who will I be now that you are gone?

What will I do with the voice that sounds like yours bouncing around

in my memory?

When I say your name again you will not answer;

Will I be alone in your absence? Will I be anything at all?

What do I want now that you are gone::

my desire for your love defined me::

your presence filled spaces::

now those spaces are like wounds::

You cut yourself

out of my bark,

You widdled my surface coming close,

wielding guilt like a pocket knife.

Disappointment threatens to move in like an infection

If we deny the lacrimal of love to drip its disinfectant.

The heat of Hope cauterized the edges and yet

There is swelling and throbbing but there is no emptiness here.

We are full of ourselves.

Our words for your leaving caught and lumping like mucus in our throats

So we gave in to hope, not the big Hope you wanted for us,

the little hopes:

That we will each touch your hand once, then

Look into your face, then

Then go eat breakfast

Without you.

That we will sing your favorite songs and eat your favorite foods, then

remember you well, not fully but respectfully.

Not for you

For ourselves.

We will hold onto what we enjoyed and sort out

The painful pieces of you, your remains.

We will find a way to leave them behind,

In our own time

Not just because you died

But because we did not.

And all this time we must have thought we were doing this for you, with you

But now you are gone and we go on.

We go on in the ways you taught us

Saying the words you said—

And laughing;

Saying the words you said—

And raging like a wild fire

cuts a swath through the forest of story, our anger toward you

burning a jagged and unpredicted hollow down the center.

But we are the forest people—loving,

the tall trees—crowding the fueling dueling underbrush—we know

what fire means

what fire brings:

the heat the seeds need

to tell them how the old is dying, drying and burning away

making room for (the new)

you.

We are the Phoenix seeds, rising slowly from the acid of the ashes.

You asked to be cremated, never knowing (how hot) our anger

was burning you alive all this time.

You shrieked at us, and we put the fire inside out with our tears,

Until today

when the tears come all salt and gather enough oil as they race over our noses: they splash and spit across the flame, splattering, sizzling, and finally crystallized across the soiled floor::

You are the salt of the earth and we have salted the field

crying over the loss

and then remembered the blessing of your dried marrow.

Looking across, bearing the pall, it seems all (hope) is lost

Just because you are lost.

But the truth is

we are not lost

because we are losing you.

this is what it looks like here

2009-11-04T10:25:00.000-08:00

This is the last post from the berkeleyblogs skinnytree
I thought you might like something familiar in an unfamiliar place:

maybe i never told you about the professor who taught my class on existentialism in undergrad so here is the whole story: he was a little west of middle aged, with plenty of white hair and he was one of the LaSallian Brothers who lived on campus with us. I don't remember his name but i do remember him leaving class to use the restroom at least once each session.
During a discussion on Heiddeger he excused himself for a moment and when he returned with a tiny flourish he picked up a piece of chalk and wrote the word mystery on the board.
once he knew we were all paying attention he said,
Take it from a celibate, mystery is everything.

when we moved into that last house
i swore i'd never move again
because i hate moving
but i hated other things about that life
more than i hate moving.

so now that it seems fitting to use the phrase
"the rest of your stuff"
about things, furnishings, wedding rings
i am warming to the possibility
that this one more painful part of the process is coming to an end and
I'm going to get it
get this
get it
wrong or right
i'm going to get it.

There are these things we say to one another and given a change in context, a change in place or face or space a simple phrase can mean different things: same words moving through the space between us, moving meanings impossible to pin down
Get it, take it
from me
take it, get it?
I got you
I've got you
right where...
I want you
Its all there,
get it, take it
one last chance to take it
take on
take hold,
hold it!
hold on,
I've got you.

hold on, I've got you.