I'm not dead

...just super busy.

Sorry for the lack of posting, but I expect to get back on it in a week or so. (I've got some stuff to muse about.)

If I haven't seen your lovely face in awhile, won't you stop by the Soulfari Kenya Launch Party at Chameleon Arts Project (22nd & Tracy) tomorrow night, June 1 from 6-9?

We just got our non-profit status, so we'll be celebrating and feasting in a Biblical fashion.

Oh...and Moms & Pops will be in town, so you know it's gonna be fun.

Burn...cont'd.

Thought my few and faithful might appreciate the efforts of two rounds with a particularly crimson pen. I’m calling this one for the Sharpie.

From my back

Puffy white vapor of cloud –
You b r e e z e
across this lapis dome of sky
with such smoky slowness,
dissipating after a minute or two.

Just a second ago your soft molecules
gathered in a marshmallow-y cluster
to form magic things
(lobsters and continents and the like)
before shape-shifting into something
like a cactus or a diving bird
with a too-long wing.

Oh, to be like you,
easily releasing shape as it suits.

Burn, baby. Burn.

I'm sort of writing again. "Sort of" because I'm doing what I should've done a long time ago. I'm editing.

It's really difficult for me to edit. I feel bad for the little piece or phrase that doesn't fit exactly right and gets cut. It feels like the wordy equivalent of picking kickball teams in third grade.

"Alright, it's really nice that you're focusing on the green grass below you, little sentence, but you just don't fit with the "obsessed with the skies" team over there. You're cut."

Ouch. And "Looking very much like Central Park" felt so right when I wrote it.

I was thinking about my cemetery of sentences (and all the graves I'm filling during my nightly massacres) when I stumbled across these thoughts by one Mr. Wendell Berry in his book, A Part.

An Autumn Burning

In my line of paperwork
I have words to burn: leaves
of fallen information, wasted
words of my own. I know a light
that hastens on the dark
some work deserves - which God forgive
as we must hope. I start the blaze
and observe the fire's superlative
hunger for literature. It touches pages
like a connoisseur, turns them.
None can endure. After the passing
of that light, there is sunlight
on the ash, in the distance singing
of crickets and birds. I turn,
unburdened, to life beyond words.

As usual, he says it better. But then again, I'm sure he edited the heck out of it.

A thankful heart prepares the way...

"Come fall on us,
we fall on you,
a thankful heart will be our rhythm.
Come fall on us
we fall on you,
a thankful heart will be our song."
Come Fall On Us - 100 Portraits & Waterdeep - Enter the Worship Circle

I need to pause and give thanks in a very big, very public way.

God, you always come through.
You always redeem.
Our trials are only for a moment,
then things are as they should be again.

I am grateful for that peace.

My thankful heart beats in appreciation for you.
My mind is quieted by your peace and love.
You are so very very good to me.
Asante sana.

Summer Benedictions

I’ve always wanted to live a good, full and meaty life. That kind of existence that leaves me spent - where all the potential in a day has been wrung from it and I STILL keep tugging and twisting to get that last drop out.

I had it all - this whole rush of scary and sweet newness over the last few years and at some point, I’d had enough. My hands couldn’t wring any more. I wanted to curl up for a bit and rest. Slow things down. Get to know myself again.

And that was all well and good and timely and beautiful. Really, really, really beautiful.

Then sometime around April, that dum-de-dum pace started to get old. It was complacency, not restoration.

Perhaps this warm summer air or the *idea* that I might be canceling my cable has lit a fire under me again.

Kiddos, it’s time for something communal and exciting. No more of this solitary winter hibernating.

*******

Let us make fireworks and revel about to LOUD music.

May we feast and rejoice with each other. (Lots of feasting. And hours of egregious fellowship.)

May this life’s already begun blessings stretch down with deeper rooting.

May these minds step over the dead weight of our pasts. The chaff has been burned. It is time to pass the ashes and leave them behind.

May we be adventurers – to distant lands and unfamiliar pastimes.

May we fully embrace life. May we embrace each other without abandon.

*****

"After looking at the way things are on this earth, here's what I've decided is the best way to live: Take care of yourself, have a good time, and make the most of whatever job you have for as long as God gives you life. And that's about it. That's the human lot. Yes, we should make the most of what God gives, both the bounty and the capacity to enjoy it, accepting what's given and delighting in the work. It's God's gift! God deals out joy in the present, the now. It's useless to brood over how long we might live."

Ecclesiastes 5:18-20 (The Message)

The Feminine (A Tribute)

You take care of the small things.

Like cultivating moments
spent idling outside the mall,
sewing on pointe shoe ribbons,
getting pedicures
and traversing rush hour traffic
to baseball practices and piano lessons.

I was brought up right -
my tiny hands (like yours)
picked up your brushes
and played at being a woman,
hunched over the mysteries of your drawers,
and the magical future that I would inherit
in years of opalescent eyes,
lengthened lashes
and perfumes too big for my age.

Yes, your care was truly deliberate and almighty,
the trunk and roots of our leafy family.

Our Mary. Our stability.

We are always growing and changing,
sometimes fighting to break away from your tether.
(And I know I will never completely understand how that tears and rips.)
Yet all the while your spirit remains vast and comforting -
the quintessential womb of womanness.

My protector and lifeblood.
My mother.

Summer is:

sunglasses
reading in the shade
walks at night
Marvin Gaye’s “Got to Give it Up”
fresh strawberries
ice cold lunar ale
back porch hang sessions
tiki torches
fresh faces
floaty, floral skirts
outdoor concerts
cruising the farmer’s market
afternoon naps
hot fudge sundaes from DQ
tan lines
burgers
car windows down, Common’s “The Light” blaring
cicadas
sitting in the cheap seats at the K
buying flowers for no good reason
being torn between iced and hot coffee
flip flops
clean perfume

This I Believe

There’s this series on NPR that I love called “This I Believe.” In it, everyday people become eloquent poets of their experiences, detailing the deepest beliefs of their hearts.

These people open their veins and share their pains, their struggles, their hopes. To say that it moves me would be an understatement. (En route to the Lyric I’ve caught myself crying to the words of a woman struggling to help her daughter overcome addiction – she now believes in the power of support.)

Beautiful stories aside, the series always reminds me that we are all human.

I shared some impassioned words with a friend today. She is a woman who I love and cherish and respect. She is a force - a woman who is dealing with uncertainty and frustration head-on. Things pummel her every day that she cannot control.

Despite all of our communities’ hopes and prayers, God just hasn’t let up yet. I really don’t know why He hasn’t. (Though I believe that He will.)

So I got to thinking about what I do know. I know that I am with her.

If I could call down fire from heaven to wash her clean, I would do it. If I could take on her pain, I would do it. In that aching passion, I am struck that this is my belief:

I believe in the self-renewing abundance of faith.

We will always have enough faith to give a little away to people who need it.

In full disclosure, I’m still in the process of understanding why this is. I may never know, other than to give full, majestic, divine credit to God for it.

I simply know from my own experience that I will not give up my faith for the people I love, nor will I cease to hope and pray on their behalf.

This faith has become self-renewing. Believing in right and good things for others makes me less selfish. I can see their prayers delivered. I can believe again that God is in the business of deliverance. I can know again that He does it for me as well.

As I re-realized today, I know that when we ache and weep and ask for the blessings of the ones we love, well, God just hears those things. And I believe in the aftermath of our wailing, we find faith. We find moments of healing and restoration. For ourselves. For others.

“Then you will look and be radiant,
your heart will throb and swell with joy;
the wealth on the seas will be brought to you,
to you the riches of the nations will come.”
Isaiah 60:5

And he just says it better...

And a man said, "Speak to us of Self-Knowledge."

And he answered, saying:
Your hearts know in silence the secrets of the days and the nights.
But your ears thirst for the sound of your heart's knowledge.
You would know in words that which you have always know in thought.
You would touch with your fingers the naked body of your dreams.
And it is well you should.

-Khalil Gibran (The Prophet)

Mama, would you be a dahlin' and fetch me a sweet tea?

So, this weekend Cass and I went to see her old world in Stillwater, Oklahoma. To say that it was a much needed vacation is an understatement, but besides the overwhelming sense of peace I got from visiting the south, I also learned that I:

1. Suck at shuffleboard
2. Rule at naming an artist, song and album in the first 5 seconds
3. Might be the only person who gets inspired to pray in a bar…and does it
4. Find myself saying “y’all,” “mama,” and “daddy,” the second I get south of Kansas
5. Am not a hard-core runner when the humidity is 150%
6. Need to be closer to big, vast skies
7. Have a second family in Cass’
8. Just feel a lot happier in a hammock

On peace

She howls at the moon from the middle of the moonlit prairie, waiting in the vast blue-gray expanse for the skies to open up and wring out rain.

She aches for it – the liquid simultaneously cool and warm, like the womb of a bubble bath. Something like home.

Ahhh…at last - newly clean, lungs aching, she and God will finally get somewhere. Somewhere transcendent and new – a place where love is all around and venomous snakes stay off her land.

(Then she doesn’t have to look to the ground and watch each step.)

But the poison is a forgotten nightmare. Here they have the moon and the happy little moments where the stars are as children to her. She knows their names, locations and when they came to be. In rapture, she stares. She sleeps the slumber of a newborn infant.

They do. Together. Breath rising and falling in a rhythm set forth in Eden.

Even in bliss, this is not a vision to be made manifest. It is the gossamer and glitter of dreams and pixie dust, only tangible through the magic of a humble carpenter.

She will sigh again, head heavy and mourning her walk into the moonlight. She will watch for snakes as anxiety does its best to rise up as a knot in her throat. But it will not come to pass. The moon is enough light for father and daughter. Eternity and ash. Creator and clay.

We Are Growing Old Together

This day, so beautiful,
bubbles up towards the heavens.
It rides the gusts of wind upupup
like a gravity-defiant brook or
the bits of breath behind a prayer.

The things you do will not
surprise me,
though I try to be jaded.

Utterly simple,
you will not strut about
with your blessings:
a friendly wink,

a coyly given phone number…

a bus ride,

four miles finished,

eggs and toast and mmmmmm, coffee,

sunshine and shaded chairs,

hipster girls,

articles about Africa,

phone lines to North Carolina,

big water bottles,

bare feet

and newly shorn hair.

In these coincidences,
my heart’s fiery embers are stoked.
Simmering quietly,
as a child just entrusted with a secret
and struck by your vastness,
I am left to
let my thoughts swim about the warm air of this
frenzied Sunday.

Then I’ll realize that heaven is here,
in this city place -
just jumps away from the blue skies above
and eternity.