Blue Shutters

Things I Learned from My Father

2012-01-02T10:59:00.000-08:00

(Some Taught On Purpose, Some Accidentally, and There’s No Knowing Which is Which)

(I meant to finish this by Father's Day this summer, but it sat half-done for a long time. Sorry, Dad. I love you.)

Coffee is awesome. It tastes good, and you can have it first thing in the morning. That makes coffee awesome. This is an excellent reason to get out of bed in the morning.

When someone asks you how your children are doing when they're not around, you won't know how much it touches your children's hearts when they hear of this later and are told, “When he was talking about each of you, it was as if he had only one child.” This is important, although you may not know how much. Your children will know that you see them—really see them—and this simple knowledge of how your eyes danced when you talked about each of them will make them a little teary and remind them of who they are and where they came from.

Work. Work hard. Don't work for titles and accolades. Work because God has given you the gift of life, and you repay that gift by being a contributing member of the human race. This requirement of productivity is not restricted to the activities you get paid for. Human beings were not created to sit around.

When you walk into a room, speak to everyone. It does not matter if these people are white, black, brown, purple, or metallic. Speak to everyone. Don't just speak respectfully. Speak with love. All of those people were created by the same God. He’s your God, too.

Speak to children. They’re important. Engage them. Smile big. Don’t rush them. Sometimes people warm up slow. It’s ok. Speak to them. Listen to them. Look at them when they ask you to. Meet them where they are. When they ask you to look at them, do everything you can to look. It’s how they learn that they are of consequence in the world. They’re asking for you to validate their worth. You must, must, must do this.

Eradicating racism happens through meeting eyes, shaking hands, working together, claiming each other, speaking, listening, and eating supper in each other’s homes. We can’t kill it with arguments and rants, and we can’t kill it simply by telling it to die. We have to learn how to see through skin to souls. Truthfully, this isn’t as hard as everyone says that it is.

Your family is not only the people you were born to.

Girls may like dresses, but that doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t know how to pull a bow, process a deer, kick a ball, tie up tomatoes, and find shelter in the woods to stay warm in case they get lost. If you don’t treat them like they might break, there’s a good chance that they’ll get damn close to bullet-proof.

Expect your daughters to open their own doors. Teach them to change their own tires and defend themselves and others. When people ask you if you’re disappointed that you had 5 daughters, look at them like it’s the stupidest question in the world. Don’t do it because someone’s watching. Do it because you really believe that it IS the stupidest question in the world.

Don’t do anything because someone’s watching. Be yourself. Don’t hide.

Money is not everything, but it is important. On both ends of the wealth spectrum exists the danger of forgetting that money isn’t everything. Also remember that money isn’t nothing. There is no virtue in being poor. It’s not what God meant when He told us to “renounce the world.” Beware of people who tell you otherwise.

Respect your resources. An old Coca-Cola sign may be the roof of a rabbit hutch. Never go out and buy a shed when you can build one with a tarp, some spare lumber, and a good post-hole digger. Don’t spend more money than you have to.

Be teachable. You do not know everything. Do not walk into situations thinking that you do. Offer suggestion only when you are asked. Do so respectfully, and avoid emotional attachment to what you suggest. You are in this world to learn—not teach—as much as you possibly can. When you go into a new situation, be teachable.

There are better decisions and worse decisions, but whatever path you choose will have consequences and will teach you something. It makes absolutely no sense to sit around praying and waiting for a sign. Pray, make a decision, and do something. Certainly there are bad choices, but God doesn’t speak to most of us in neon, blinking signs when we are stopped politely. He may speak to you, but it’s not going to happen while you’re paralyzed with fear of screwing up. Move. God’s there—like the air. Just keep breathing.

At the same time, if you’re not sure, it’s either not the right person or not the right time. Wait until you’re sure.

The fact that everyone accepts a certain thing does not make it true. Nor does this make it right. Human beings have accepted numerous incorrect assumptions throughout history. Investigate everything for yourself, and accept that the investigation may have to happen through non-conventional means if you are to reach the full truth. When you find truth that contradicts what you thought previously, be flexible. Also remember that the fact that everyone around you says that something is true does not make it true. It makes it what everyone around you says.

Spirituality does not have to look any certain way. The expression of reverence is as diverse as the human family. Do not judge yourself for not expressing your spirituality in conventional ways. Some of us just hear God more clearly while we're walking around in the woods.

God lives everywhere from the sound of the leaves in the trees to the river to people around you to the corners of your own soul. God lives everywhere.

spinster poetry

2011-09-04T22:20:00.000-07:00

One day, I will write you a poem.

One day, I will write you a poem for every day we were apart,

a poem for every moment we spent not knowing each other’s faces,

not knowing the scent of each other’s hair,

not knowing

not hearing

not being

I will read these poems to you one after the other, in long succession, my head resting on my pillow, your head resting on my stomach,

my voice speaking into the top of your head and not into your eyes

because if I speak those words into your eyes my voice will be lost and something will surely catch on fire

and, baby, we don’t keep a fire extinguisher in the bedroom.

And there’s not enough water in the world.

I will write you a poem for every decision you had to make alone,

for every time you wanted to plan for our future, and I wasn’t there

for every dream you wanted to talk about when I couldn’t hear you

for every time you found yourself somewhere dark, reached out for my hand, and felt only a faint breeze

for every time you worked late, and no one noticed,

for every time you were really hungry, and no one cared.

Baby, you cooked last night, so dinner is in the oven.

I will write you a poem.

I will write you a poem for the children we should have started having when we were younger,

for the career changes which might have been easier earlier,

for the college graduations we will be attending with more grey in our hair than the other parents,

for the great-grandfathers the kids will only hear stories of,

for the years we attended family gatherings alone,

for the millions of “Dating anybody?” questions you had to dodge,

for the weddings you had to go to without me on your arm.

Baby, I will wear that dress you love,

we will dance in the kitchen all night long,

and I will write you a poem.

I will write you a poem for every time you didn’t get to do my dishes,

for every time you did the laundry and didn’t have to pull my bras out before starting the dryer,

for every time you left the house without having to wait for me to put on make-up,

for all of that time spent in the car without having the temperature constantly adjusted to just

the right

degree,

for the years you spent sleeping on basic-colored sheets wrapped in that comforter from college,

sugar daddy, it’s called a duvet.

You can read about it in my poem.

I will write you a poem for every flower you never got to give me,

for every greeting card you never got to leave for me on the kitchen counter,

for every time you had to sit through the guys at work complaining about their wives without being able to tell them how you have never felt like more of a man,

how your woman writes a poem with her every curve,

how you never knew how good it could be.

I will write you a poem… again… and again… and again… and again.

I will write you a poem for every prayer you ever said alone,

for every time you prayed for me,

for every time I prayed for you,

for every time you asked God why you were still walking alone,

for every time you had to patiently make peace,

for every time you lost patience,

for every time you almost gave up.

We will hold hands while we ask Him together.

I will thank Him for you in letters, but for you, I will write a poem.

And when the time comes for the air to leave your lips for the last time,

One way or another,

I will write you a poem.

I will place it into your out-stretched hands.

It will glow with the fire of a thousand moments when we breathed deep,

exhaled slowly,

and felt our hearts beat in unison.

I will swirl around you in all of the colors of the world,

In colors beyond colors,

melting through you, into you, within you,

until there is no space between us

until there is no space.

And no between.

I will hold your hand in the grocery store.

I will kiss you by the river until you need more chapstick.

I will tell your children bedtime stories.

I will let you grab what’s left of my ass when we’re old.

You can read all about it.

I will write you a poem.

brother

2011-04-12T21:28:00.000-07:00

Familiar music blares from my always-too-loud phone. I know what answering will mean. The shield I made this morning during the walk from bed to speaking and have been using all day to protect others from the Death Star I can feel being quietly built inside will be knocked right out of my hands and smashed on the ground. For better or for worse, he is good at destroying. He is also good at other things. I press "ignore." He will wait. Not patiently, but he will wait. I'm not ready yet. I may be when he tries again. He never waits for very long. Even states away, he can feel it when I'm hiding.

I realized early on the path to adulthood that, beyond my beloved father, I knew nothing of the more angular gender. I knew nothing of what it is to think in straight lines... to be trapped in pants... to compete in ways which I never seemed to be able to keep track of... to have responsibility before God that is different from my own... to live on the other side of the coin. I was smart enough to know that I needed to learn. I asked God in simple words, and He answered simply.

Had said answer consented to occupy less space, I might not have noticed him. He might have gotten away simply with internet communication and occasional meetings, but somewhere in there I turned my head, and he was suddenly part of what "family" feels like. Together, we came to better understand other words. He taught me about "protect" and "respect"... taught me in ways you can only learn from a brother...
taught me in ways you can only learn from someone who is willing to tell you when you have become the enemy...
taught me in ways you can only learn when someone turns up when there are lions to fight, bares his teeth, and jumps into the pit with you...
someone who never needs a list of reasons why he should hasten when he hears, "Help," and knows how to never make you feel small for asking...
or feel small at all...

... and it's not because he walked out of a comic book. I have flown at his demons. I know them by name. He and I have also come nearly to blows, as is often the case when fire meets fire and there's just about anything in the vicinity. We are not known for our long fuses, but then again, although we may look nothing alike, bits of our souls seem to be cut from the same cloth. There are times when he smacks the cup out of my hands when I'm trying to hydrate just to see the look on my face, and there are times when I have to push him away because he is standing on the hem of my dress with his big foot while I'm trying to leave the room.
Not on purpose.
But sometimes on purpose.
And sometimes it's really caught on something else, but then I'm one who blames those in her heart first.

Don't make that face. You are, too.

Somewhere in my mind, the thought of the brother God sent me from another family is stitched to the word "community." We like to think of community as something out there, not something in here. We say that we "work in the community," like it's a place and not the corners of our hearts stapled together... or "with the community," like we can work with ourselves. Like you and me are not made of the same elements. Like we could separate, even if we tried. Like turning my back on you isn't turning my back on me which, as it turns out, looks a lot like circles.

Yes, I realize my rambling, but there is something to say about what has happened that has something to do with the way the world smells right now... something about the interchange between woman and man... something about what that has done to so many... something which needs to be laid plain:

There is that which obedience to God protects. There is that which boundaries protect.

Somewhere in my heart there is a love letter to him, one in which I will explain what it feels like to know down deep that I am heard... that my voice is one which speaks... that what is spoken is heard through the filter of respect, a filter created because the voice is mine. Through the mirror of his eyes, I saw parts of myself which were before invisible, parts which he still defends tirelessly, just as tirelessly as I defend his. I will explain in that letter how it feels for the mirror to appear and call for my attention when I think that I may be invisible again... although I suspect that he may already know. I hope that he does...

Somewhere in that letter will come this lesson: Respect makes for love like this, love which doesn't need to go away and hide... all-inclusive love for life and for humanity which rejoices with the chance to read this letter to his wife, to her children, to their children... love which turns into service and fosters the development of others, of groups of others, of a family which comes in a billion different shades of love, love which stands in the sunlight and announces, "This is what community feels like. This is what it feels like to be the human family."

It's what I mean when I ask, "Unite the hearts of Thy servants..."
It's what I mean when I sing, "All are His servants, and all abide by His bidding."
It's what pumps in my heart when it beats, "We all come from God, and unto Him do we return."

I smiled when the phone rang. She saw the picture of his brown face and the face of his daughter on the screen. "Who's that?"
"My brother."

purple, turquoise, and yellow stitching

2011-03-30T12:02:00.000-07:00

Dear Tomato Red Dress with the Purple, Turquoise, and Yellow Stitching,

You make me feel wistful.

Dress, I know that you don't remember, but I can still feel my fingers tugging through what I didn't know then were curls, pulling at knots the wind had created to smooth my unsmoothable tresses into a thick braid held together all day all by my corkscrew hair made screwier by Southern summertime humidity rendered nearly unbearable when coupled with my own nervous tension at the knowledge that the cool breeze now finding the back of my neck made the mole, also on the back of my neck, visible to the other students sitting behind me who would soon point out, oh-so-politely I'm sure, that I (snicker) had a tick (giggle) stuck to the back of my neck (guffaw).

Thanks. It's called a mole. But thanks, you know, for... noticing...

Dress, it was called "middle school." I always wondered what the "middle" was for... middle of what? Hell? Self-destruction? A hormonally-induced mad house? Why couldn't I play with dolls anymore, and why was playing outside getting so boring?

Dress, I was the eternal new kid, and I was alone until I suddenly found myself in the midst of writers and feelers and dreamers and crusaders. I flirted with the Beatles, long skirts in beautiful colors, exchanging notes in the hall with a boy who was a little shorter than me, and my first pair of heels, brown sandals which made me taller but didn't stop me from running. There was something magical about coffee and sleep-overs and laughing through class together.

Dress, I remember thinking that I could be happy, very happy, if only my nose were smaller and I didn't have to wear glasses. And if my hair would just be straight and orderly like the other girls.

Dress, I think I got lost sometime around the bra. The memory that steps forward when I ask my mind what the first one looked like is the raging embarrassment I felt when my mother pushed me into Victoria's Secret, and a woman with a measuring tape pushed me towards a drawer filled with the horribly uncomfortable things made of humiliatingly smooth lace and shine. My unfailingly delicate and feminine mother bought the Sprite bra, a satin number printed with lemons and limes. Teenage angst forced me to rage further against my mother, the measuring tape, the underwire, and the grave injustice of the system in general, but I modeled Sprite alone in the bathroom after the house went to sleep. I outgrew it much faster than I wanted to. It lived in my drawer unworn for years just because it was so delicate and feminine.

Delicate and feminine.

Dress, I don't know why exactly, but my skirts got lost in a sea of over-sized t-shirts and dragging jeans hems. My eyebrows grew. My skin exploded. My nose seemed of nearly epic proportions. I cut off my hair, determined to divide what I had failed to conquer. I worked very, very hard at disappearing. I tried very, very hard to pack all of my delicate and feminine into a box and put it in the attic. Delicate gets broken, and feminine appears to be conquerable. I was determined to yell, "Don't touch me," with my every step... with the way I held my shoulders. My voice was too afraid to come out when I was asked to sing solos. Pictures from that period testify. You could see how I kept my light covered. How I watched it closely so that it never got big enough to see. How I couldn't see how many of the point-and-laughers were fighting the very same battle. How I couldn't see how impossibly hard the world conspires to be on girls at that age...

These days I wish that I could scoop myself at 15 up, wrap my arms around her, look her dead in the eye at 2 inches from her nose, and say,

"Stop it.
Stop trying to pretend that you're the smallest thing in the room.
Stop trying to go where you will have to fight to find yourself.
Stay away from the shadows.
You were created to sing to the sunshine."

Dress, I'd be wearing you because your tomato redness would be the only color for the armor of my fierce, fierce love for her just as God made her, your purple, turquoise, and yellow stitches the color of every bit of life that knitted together into flowers blooming just because.

Just because she was beautiful.
Just because she was beautiful.
Just because she was beautiful.

We would stretch our arms to the sun and twirl in circles until we fell down.

Love,

war paint

2011-02-04T13:17:00.000-08:00

(I feel moved to mention that some of this gets a little graphic. Please tread lightly, and hold your own hands.)

Yesterday I went out to buy some new war paint. Inside this store with a billion colors and textures and lights and scents, I found the perfect shade of war paint. It covered the places where my tired and stressed show and made my face smooth and ready for battle. I also bought some stuff for the hairs that grow out of my head. This stuff is supposed to make the curls bounce and shine. Hopefully this will serve to further confuse the enemy. I did this because I am a woman.

I want to elaborate here, because part of being in this small room is that I can say what I want... what I seldom get the chance to speak aloud. I love being a woman. Everything about being a member of this gender makes me want to jump for joy. I love war paint. I love skirts. I love colors and ruffles and flowers and the swirl of my hair. I love my perfume so much that I have to fight the urge to drink it. I love how strong my legs are, and I love the way that all of me curves. I love that I dream of the scent of babies' heads. I love communication and estrogen and friendship and nuturing and thongs and justice and brains wired to knit all of that together in a way incomprehensible to most of the men I know. Men, I appreciate all that you are, but I thank God that He decided to make me a woman.

There is a story of womanhood stuck in my head.

There is a story of a woman who was walking in the cool crispness of the night air recently, no doubt enjoying the way the breeze felt as it kissed her face. She walked alone, leaving wherever she was before and using her long legs to carry her wherever she was going. She was minding her own. Perhaps it had been a long day, and this was the first taste of freedom after a long, hard grind of her own stone. Perhaps her car was just up the block. Perhaps the song in her head was sweet, and she was dancing a little inside, picturing a mug of hot tea and maybe a cookie or two while watching something that would make her laugh...

Three men pulled up in a car.
One of them pulled out a gun.
He pointed it at her and instructed her to get into the car.

Maybe she didn't think about how if she just sat down right where she was, she likely would survive.
Maybe she didn't think about how if she ran and screamed, someone likely would hear her.
Maybe she didn't think about how low-life peices of shit don't often shoot the gun they're aiming, that it's seldom loaded, that she could probably get away.
Maybe she reacted to the perfectly natural fear in her gut and not to the logic in her brain and got into the car.

She was raped by all three men and dumped on the side of the road.

This story haunts me.

I am haunted by this story when the wind blows too loudly outside my window, causing branches to move in the trees. I am haunted by this story when I have to walk from a lit door to my car. I am haunted by this story when a man walks around me from behind, even in plain daylight.
This story chases me in my dreams... chases me while I think about my favorite walks in the moonlight... chases me when I think about my sisters and bedtime stories in nightgowns, all piled into a double bed and our travels and our hopes and our dreams... chases me when I think about my neices... chases me when I put on my bra... chases me

into the war paint store

and I'm so sick of being told that the smart thing to do is to not walk alone at night.
The smart thing to do is to call someone to come and escort me... like my legs don't work, and I'm not smart enough to remember where I left my fucking car.
The smart thing to do is to be vigilant.
I should remember that I am not free to enjoy my music in my headphones, my hair in a pony tail, solitude, and evening crispness at the same time.
I should remember that you and I do not live in the same world, that I can be as strong as I want and still not safe
that this story is chasing me
always
chasing me

Until I take a deep breath, turn around, and bid it to come on

Where I turn around and fly into its face with the fury of every woman on this earth whose breasts have ever been made darts for the idle fancies of the men around them...
the fury of every woman who has ever graduated from anything...
the fury of every mother who has ever watched her child hurt in any way and proceeded to seek and destroy...
the fury of every girl who was ever touched unwillingly...
the fury of every father who has ever sent his daughter out into the world and had to sit on his hands...
the fury of every bit of what should be strong and beautiful broken down to small and manageable...
the fury that happens when you attack what God told you to protect...

You see, there is a little part of me that wishes that you would sneak up on me in the night. I have never made someone bleed. I don't really want to bring that part of myself out because the rest of me wonders if that's called tempting fate... if I will really react like I did that time that bee flew into my face and I almost knocked myself out hitting the deck... but I'm going to let that little part speak.

She needs the exercise.
She needs to stay ready to bring it should danger ever actually come
(which makes me angrier still... why should I have to give harbour to Rage just in case I should ever need it?)
and she needs to speak...
out loud...
too many can't...
and this is a small room, but she

needs

to

speak

Somebody once told me that the violence won't stopped until the attacker is afraid of what he is attacking. I took a class where someone taught me to break bones and expect blood and scream from my guts.

I want you to walk up on me.
I want you to ask me into that car.
I want you to try and get away.
I will come after you, and I won't stop and I won't resist and I won't pause and I won't hesitate.

Think through your decisions.

I smear on war paint every morning, and the only thing I've got that can't be fixed is my self-respect.

And I keep hearing "Fathers be good to your daughters/ Daughters will love like you do..." and thinking,

"Who gives a shit in times like these?

Fathers,
Teach your daughter to say NO
Teach your daughter to run
Teach your daughter to scream
Teach your daughter what it feels like to break things with her hands
Teach your daughter to fall on their backs and kick anything within reach
Teach your daughter to roll and to pin
Teach your daughter to hit a nose hard and from below so that it bleeds and then use that knee quickly
Teach your daughter that she is beautiful and powerful and worth protecting
Teach your daughter how
NOT
TO
GET
INTO
THE
CAR.

It is of the utmost importance that I add
Sister, I don't blame you.
I don't know what I would have done in your place, and there are no words for how sorry I am for your story... and I don't blame your father.

I blame monsters.
I blame monsters that I want to tear to shreds.
I blame a society that doesn't hold its boys enough.
I blame gangs and poverty and schools and prisons and guns and ignorance and prejudice and history and disempowerment and fear and hate and blame
I blame a society that taught me to seek protection instead of be protection.

It's what I remember when I put on my war paint.

connection

2010-12-13T12:20:00.001-08:00

there came a moment in the middle of the song when she suddenly felt every heartbeat in the room & after that she never forgot she was part of something much bigger

-- Brian Andreas, Storypeople

it came free with the soul

2010-12-11T09:49:00.000-08:00

There's a phrase that has been circling my mind for some time.

"It came free with the soul."

I saved it somewhere safe, thinking one day a poem would come out. Hasn't happened yet.

It came free with the soul.

Inspiration comes from God, I guess... only it seems that there are those who would seek to put God in a box, saying that He only looks like one thing... that He doesn't move around and within and between and above and below and "every other side to which we are exposed..." Thus the times when I feel Spirit raining from the trees, shining from the sky, squishing between my toes, glittering before my eyes, fluttering in my heart, smiling from the face in front of me, I hope it's safe to call that God. And that eye we see all that with?

It came free with the soul.

I was thinking yesterday that I have become almost nearly exactly what I always wanted to be. I sleep alone but swaddled in the warmest colors I know, accompanied by dreams of swirling shapes and safe voices, and awakened to hot water which magically rains as I happily dance myself clean. This happens nearly every morning. I am no one's mother, but I am auntie to some of the loveliest little ones I have ever known and have been blessed to lay hands on some young people whose names I still breathe in prayer whenever they come before my inner eye. From the tips of my toes to the ring in my nose to the hairs growing out of my head to the degree I'll eventually fetch from a stage, I am nearly exactly what I always hoped I might be but never really thought I'd grow into. All this. So much that I am sometimes so full that it seems that the only rational response would be to run out into the street and explode. I am blessed and richly favored, and it appears that

It came free with the soul.

I read where Baha'u'llah wrote, "My calamity is my providence. Outwardly it is fire and vengence, but inwardly it is light and mercy..." but somehow when the moment is upon me I always find it hard to remember to knit together the fire I feel with the light of which He wrote... and although I have felt burned by vengence, it is never clear until later that it was mistaken mercy. It took time to sense the Hand in which I was so tenderly held, but I really must remember that

It came free with the soul.

So although I still feel the burn of that last fire... and oh, I still have to keep it covered because that shit hurt... deeeeeeeep b r e a t h . . . I heard Spirit moving in words I heard sung this morning... "I hear the angels whisper that troubles don't have to last always. I hear the angels whisper even the day after tomorrow will one day be yesterday. I hear the angels whisper this, too, shall pass..." and remember that although sometimes I don't see where He is going with all of this, there is a path. It happens that

It came free with the soul.

So... me? The one with all the impatience? The one screaming in the face of injustice? The one who can't wait to get up and run? Let it wash over you. There is no way you could afford this. Fortunately, this, too, is part of the deal. It came free with the soul.

email sent to Senator Jim DeMint

2010-12-10T14:45:00.000-08:00

South Carolina residents, please write your own emails ASAP.
http://demint.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?p=CommentOnLegislationIssues

*

Dear Senator DeMint,

On Dec. 3 Senate Resolution 694 (S. Res.694) was introduced to the US Senate by U.S. Senator Sam Brownback, condemning Iran for its state-sponsored persecution of religious minorities and its continued violation of the International Covenants on Human Rights. This resolution condemns the abuses of Baha'is, Christians, Jews, and Sufis in Iran. This resolution is currently pending before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, of which I understand that you are a member. I also understand that the Committee will be holding a hearing on the resolution this coming Tuesday, Dec. 14. I am writing to beg you to co-sponsor this resolution before it goes to committee.

I am deeply proud of being the citizen of a country that shows concern about the rights of people around the world to be free from oppression, violence, and terror. I have been proud to see my government pass resolution after resolution against the treatment of religious minorities in Iran.

I have never been to my mother's country, I do not know her language. I am deprived of everything having to do with my heritage on that side of my family because of the violent intolerance of my family's religious beliefs. My mother's family has literally been torn to shreds due to the fanatical perversion of the worship of God which happens there, and the situation over there continues to escalate. Members of the Baha'i Faith have been systematically persecuted since the beginning of this faith in 1844. I do not have to explain to you that South Carolinians care about their people. We care about our heritage. Sir, half of my heritage has been stolen from me.

I am certain that you have been acquainted with the situation in Iran, but allow me to add a detail or two of the millions out there. My great-grandmother's grave and the graves of many other Baha'is were bull-dozed and covered with a parking lot a few years ago. I have a close friend who had recently returned from Bolivia where he visited with his sister whom he had not seen in 38 years and finally heard the whole story of how her husband was taken in the night from her home and how how she and her 9-year-old son visited with him for 30 minutes every other week until he was, without warning, brutally killed. The guards once hit the boy in the head just for sport when he ran to his father on one of those visits. Another friend had to be given away at her wedding by her uncle since her father's visa was denied in the weeks before her wedding, depriving her of having her father walk her down the aisle. There are Baha'is in prison there for running a non-religious tutoring program teaching children in the ghetto to read. There are Baha'is in prison there for attempting to help Baha'i college students who have been kicked out of the university for being Baha'is to progress in their studies. This treatment is not unlike the treatment meted out in that country to any other religious minority, including Iranian Christians, Jews, and Sufis. I do not have to remind you that prison there does not look like prison here. These things are unacceptable by any standard of human rights known to man.

The Baha'i International Community recently wrote an open letter to the Head of the Judiciary of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The final paragraph of that letter asks: "With our hearts filled with love for Iran and our earnest hopes for the exaltation and glory of that land, we urge you, in your capacity as the Head of the Judiciary, to release the former members of the Yaran from prison and, along with them, all the Bahá’ís who are incarcerated across the country. These include Miss Haleh Rouhi, Miss Raha Sabet, and Mr. Sasan Taqva, the three young Bahá’ís who have now entered the fourth year of imprisonment in Shiraz for the crime of helping impoverished children to learn how to read and write. We likewise request that the Bahá’ís in that country be granted their full rights of citizenship, in order that they may be able to fulfill their heartfelt aspiration to contribute, alongside their fellow citizens, to the advancement of their nation. This, indeed, is no more than what you rightfully ask for Muslim minorities who reside in other lands. Bahá’ís merely seek the same treatment from you."

I am the daughter of a chiropractor who wishes that he spent more time hunting and a counselor who works with substance addicts and AIDS victims in the Upstate. I graduated from West-Oak High School in Westminster, SC, the University of South Carolina, and am now attending graduate school also at USC studying to become a marriage and family counselor. I have worked with foster children. My granddaddy, a chiropractor from Easley, South Carolina, used to remind me to remember where I come from. I never every forget, and to say that I am sad that I know almost nothing about the Iranian side of the family is an understatement of massive proportions.

Please co-sponsor of this resolution. Sir, I cannot watch my home state, the only place I have ever known to be home, not stand up and speak about the rights of my people across the ocean. I cannot read about what is happening to my people in Iran, knowing what horrible pain every member of my mother's family here continues to suffer, and know that my own government has not done everything that it can to speak out about the suffering and injustice happening in Iran.

I have always been proud to be from South Carolina. I don't ask for much, but I am determined to do everything I can to serve the people of my home state. I may not always agree with every decision that is ever made here, but I can proudly say that I am a citizen of a state that stands up and speaks its mind. I love that about us. We are not afraid to speak our truth.

Please, sir. I'm begging you. Those are my people in Iran being torn to shreds. Let this be something about which we speak.

Sincerely,

letter from the Baha'i International Community to Ayatollah Muhammad Sadeq Larijani

2010-12-10T07:11:00.000-08:00

7 December 2010

Ayatollah Mohammad Sadeq Larijani
Head of the Judiciary
Islamic Republic of Iran

Your Honor,

You are undoubtedly aware of the outcome of the trial and the subsequent appeal of Mrs. Fariba Kamalabadi, Mr. Jamaloddin Khanjani, Mr. Afif Naimi, Mr. Saeid Rezaie, Mrs. Mahvash Sabet, Mr. Behrouz Tavakkoli, and Mr. Vahid Tizfahm the seven individuals who before their arrest were responsible, as the members of the group known as the Yaran, for administering the social and spiritual affairs of the Bahá’í community in Iran.

The lives of these seven Bahá’ís typify not only the lives of the Bahá’ís of Iran but also those of high-minded and noble-hearted Iranians of every creed and class. They are true citizens of that nation who have striven to dedicate hemselves to its service. Their birthplaces span the entire country from its capital city, to Sangsar, Yazd, Abadan, Ardestan, Mashhad, and Urumiyih. Their ages range from thirty-seven to seventy-seven. Some of them have aging parents; all of them have children, the youngest one of whom was only nine when his father was arrested. Their professional occupations are also varied and include developmental psychologist, founder of the first automated brick factory in Iran, manager of a textile factory, agricultural engineer, school principal, social worker, and optician. Alongside their professional pursuits and family duties, they have rendered, on a purely voluntary basis, distinguished service to the people of that land, as, for example, in the advancement of women, in the promotion of literacy among the country’s general population, and in the provision of the means of education for the thousands of Bahá’í youth who have been denied admission to Iranian universities since the inception of the Islamic Revolution.

Convinced that they had committed no wrong, and as there existed no proof whatsoever to support the accusations leveled against them, they had every hope that the judicial proceedings would exonerate them. Sadly, however, their hopes have thus far been frustrated, and the treatment they have received has unjustly violated every legal norm and every standard of fairness and equity. As history bears witness, whenever innocent citizens are brought before show trials, it is the judicial system itself and those who wield authority within it that are on trial before the public gaze. The case of these seven individuals, which from the outset has been watched with growing interest by Iranians and non-Iranians alike, has been marked by such egregious violations of the law at every turn as to call into question the adherence to the principle of justice by a system that claims to uphold Islamic values.

The blatant injustice of a sentence to ten years’ imprisonment handed down to such honest and law-abiding citizens impels us, as the representatives at the United Nations of one hundred and eighty-six national Bahá’í communities, to ask you to rectify this grave failure and accord the defendants the justice they have been denied. This request comes not only from their coreligionists throughout the world but from the United Nations, from governments and parliamentarians across the globe, from agencies of civil society, and from humanitarians and social thinkers, all of whom join their voices to ours in calling for the immediate release of these wronged individuals.

The officials of the Ministry of Intelligence, resorting to many reprehensible measures illegal detention, denial of proper access to legal representation, interrogation methods that contravene standards of civilized behavior and aim to extract false confessions all of which transgress even the current law of the land, exerted every effort to build a case against them. Despite this, the prosecutors were ultimately unable to present any credible evidence in support of their claims. Instead, what was exposed was the nefarious schemes of certain officials, as well as the inhumane conduct and sinister motives of the interrogators. Indeed, what is now starkly visible to all is the willingness of the authorities to trample the very standards of justice they are mandated to uphold on behalf of the people of Iran.

The trial itself was so devoid of the impartiality that must characterize judicial proceedings as to render the process a complete mockery. The defendants, certain of their own innocence and having nothing to hide, had asked for an open hearing. What then, one might ask, was the reason for the judge to have declared the proceedings to be “open and public” and yet refuse requests for attendance from observers, including representatives of diplomatic missions? Why was it made so difficult for the families of the defendants to attend the trial? Why were journalists excluded, while government cameramen were allowed an active presence? What was the reason for permitting the menacing presence of the agents of the Ministry of Intelligence throughout the trial? How was it that the verdict issued by the judges could refer to the religion of the defendants as a “misguided sect”? Is this not a clear sign that the court has violated the legal principle of neutrality? The obvious conclusion is that such actions have been motivated by blind prejudice and hatred against the Bahá'í community for its religious beliefs. How can a just society, or a just world, be built on a foundation of irrational oppression and the systematic denial of basic human rights to any minority? Everything your country overtly professes to seek on the world stage is contradicted by your treatment of your own people at home.

The 12 September 2010 ruling issued by the court of appeal overturned the verdict of the lower court in relation to the charges of espionage, collaboration with the State of Israel, and provision of classified documents to foreign nationals with the intention of undermining state security. The lower court itself had already found the defendants not guilty of the charge of “tarnishing the reputation of the Islamic Republic of Iran in the international arena” and of “spreading corruption on earth”. What remained of the case, therefore, were those charges that pertained to the activities undertaken by these seven individuals in administering the social and spiritual affairs of the Iranian Bahá’í community. Meanwhile, the judges, well aware that there were no grounds whatsoever for the charge of acting against the interests of Iran and its citizens, were under pressure from officials bent upon a finding of guilt. Consequently, the judiciary chose in essence to distort and present as illegal the religious beliefs of the defendants and their service to the Bahá’í community a selfless service which their fellow Iranian Bahá’ís warmly acknowledged and appreciated. Thus, the seven were each sentenced to ten years in prison. This sentence has been strongly denounced not only by the defendants themselves, their families, and the Bahá’í International Community but by advocates of justice in Iran and the world over.

Given that for the past twenty years the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran has been fully aware of the work of these individuals in managing the affairs of the Bahá’í community, to accuse them now of illegal activities is as baseless and unjust as it is inexplicable. Our open letter dated 4 March 2009 to the Prosecutor General of the Islamic Republic of Iran established in detail the spurious character of the charges leveled against the Yaran and we commend it to your attention. An unbiased reading of that letter will confirm that there are no grounds whatsoever on which the Islamic Republic could assert that the Bahá’ís of Iran, including these seven individuals, represent the least threat to public order or to the common weal in that land.

There is not a shred of evidence to support the accusation that these Bahá’ís were seeking to compromise national security, participating in subversive activities, or engaging in propaganda against the regime, charges which the defendants themselves have categorically denied. Such accusations are entirely inconsistent with the outstanding record of the Bahá’ís in Iran and around the world, who regard service to one’s homeland and to humankind as an inescapable moral obligation. Nor do they accord in any way with the Bahá’í teachings, which assert that “in every country where any of this people reside, they must behave towards the government of that country with loyalty, honesty, and truthfulness.” The approach adopted by the judiciary and the accusations leveled against these individuals constitute again a patent violation of the freedom of conscience and belief of Iranian citizens, and are a brazen contravention of Article 14 of the Iranian Constitution, which stipulates: “In accordance with the sacred verse, ‘God doth not forbid you to deal with kindness and fairness towards those who have not made war upon you on account of your religion, or driven you forth from your homes’ [60:8], the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran and all Muslims are duty-bound to treat non-Muslims kindly and in accordance with the principles of Islamic justice and equity, and to respect their human rights.”

Now in their third year of what is shamelessly still termed a “temporary” detention, these seven prisoners have been subjected to every manner of indignity and violation of their fundamental rights. Their high resolve and their gracious character amidst the hardships they have been made to endure stand in sharp contrast to the brutality of their oppressors and attest their forbearance and purity of motive. This is a truth to which the noble people of Iran can now bear witness. The accounts we have received indicate that fellow inmates admire their conduct and demeanor, see them as beacons of hope and sources of consolation and comfort, seek strength from their wisdom, and regard them as the symbols of the free spirit and sincere heart that are characteristics of the people of Iran.

Your honor, we ask you, what purpose is served by seeking to extinguish such moral attributes and spiritual qualities? Are such acts of oppression faithful to the high principles extolled by the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon Him)? In Gohardasht Prison, there are surely other innocent inmates. How can you allow any soul to be subjected to that prison’s appalling state of filth, pestilence, disease, and the privation of facilities for basic personal hygiene? Such an odious and degrading environment is unworthy of even the most dangerous criminals. Does the government of Iran believe the principles of Islamic compassion and justice to be consistent with the imposition of such conditions on citizens? Why are the prisoners’ pressing needs for medical care and treatment ignored? Who will be called to account if the health of any of these seven further deteriorates? Why are these innocent individuals not given adequate food, and why are they confined to prison cells of such insufficient space as to make it difficult for them to lie down or even to perform their daily prayers? Why has the judiciary callously deprived them of their right to compassionate leave? Are not all of these privations intended to break their spirits and those of the other Bahá’ís of Iran? Consider how the members of the Bahá’í community are continually forced to withstand the slander of their beliefs and the distortion of their history in government-supported mass media; to endure provocations in the streets, from the pulpits, and with the support of certain officials, that incite hatred against them; to suffer illegal imprisonment; to see themselves denied access to higher education and to the means of earning a livelihood; to have their children suffer abuse and vilification in schools; and to witness their properties destroyed and their cemeteries desecrated with the support and approval of government authorities. Yet, what results have such efforts yielded? The response of the Bahá’ís of Iran to the persecution they have suffered in recent decades has made them, in the eyes of the Iranian population, embodiments of unyielding attachment to spiritual principle and of constructive resistance to oppression. What is more, it has brought about a heightened desire among that population to become acquainted with the verities of their Faith.

In January 2010, the Universal House of Justice, the international governing body of the Bahá’í Faith, noted in a message addressed to the Bahá’ís in Iran that, when those in authority conspire against innocent citizens, their actions ultimately vitiate their own credibility. In a similar vein, in our 4 March 2009 letter to the Prosecutor General of the Islamic Republic, we pointed out that the decisions of the Iranian judiciary with respect to the Bahá’ís will have implications well beyond the Bahá’í community in that land and will extend to the very freedom of conscience of all its citizens. Our hope was that, for the sake of the honor and reputation of Iran, the judiciary would seek to be fair in their judgment.

The Bahá’ís are not “others” in your country: they are an inseparable part of the Iranian nation. The injustices meted out to them are a reflection of the terrible oppression that has engulfed the nation. Your respect now for the rights of the Iranian Bahá’ís would signal a willingness to respect the rights of all the citizens of your country. Redressing the wrongs suffered by the Bahá’ís would bring hope to the hearts of all Iranians that you are ready to ensure justice for everyone. Our call, then, is in reality a call for respect of the rights of all the Iranian people.

With our hearts filled with love for Iran and our earnest hopes for the exaltation and glory of that land, we urge you, in your capacity as the Head of the Judiciary, to release the former members of the Yaran from prison and, along with them, all the Bahá’ís who are incarcerated across the country. These include Miss Haleh Rouhi, Miss Raha Sabet, and Mr. Sasan Taqva, the three young Bahá’ís who have now entered the fourth year of imprisonment in Shiraz for the crime of helping impoverished children to learn how to read and write. We likewise request that the Bahá’ís in that country be granted their full rights of citizenship, in order that they may be able to fulfill their heartfelt aspiration to contribute, alongside their fellow citizens, to the advancement of their nation. This, indeed, is no more than what you rightfully ask for Muslim minorities who reside in other lands. Bahá’ís merely seek the same treatment from you.

Respectfully,
Bahá’í International Community

cc: Permanent Mission of the Islamic Republic of Iran to the United Nations

joining you

2010-12-06T08:54:00.000-08:00

dear darlin'
your mom, my friend,
left a message on my machine she was frantic
saying you were talking crazy
that you wanted to do away with yourself
I guess she thought I'd be a perfect resort
because we've had this inexplicable connection since our youth
and yes they're in shock
they are panicked
you and your chronic
them and their drama
you this embarrassment
us in the middle of this delusion
if we were our bodies
if we were our futures
if we were our defenses, I'd be joining you
if we were our culture
if we were our leaders
if we were our denials, I'd be joining you
I remember vividly a day years ago
we were camping you knew more than you thought you should know
you said "I don't want ever to be brainwashed"
and you were mindboggling
you were intense
you were uncomfortable in your own skin
you were thirsty, but mostly you were beautiful
if we were our nametags
if we were our rejections
if we were our outcomes, I'd be joining you
if we were our indignities
if we were our successes
if we were our emotions, I'd be joining you
you and i, we're like four year olds
we want to know why and how come about everything
we want to reveal ourselves at will and speak out minds
and never talk small and be intuitive
and question mightily and find God
my tortured beacon, we need to find like-minded companions
if we were their condemnations
if we were their projections
if we were our paranoias, I'd be joining you
if we were our incomes
if we were our obsessions
if we were our afflictions, I'd be joining you
we need reflection
we need a really good memory
feel free to call me a little more often

-- Alanis Morissette, Joining You

*

This was a really hard weekend, but then I got back to my email and one of my aunties had written to me about how a young person she knew had attempted to commit suicide. Phew... life can be really very dark, and it is important to remember that we are, first and foremost, souls. We are indeed not our bodies, futures, defenses, culture, leaders, denials, nametags, rejections, outcomes, indignities, successes, emotions, condemnations, projections, paranoias, incomes, obsessions, afflictions, or anything else by which the word defines us... or we define ourselves either.

Talk of souls is interesting to me. While I believe strongly that we each have a right to express our spirituality in whatever way feels most authentic to us, I also feel that there are times when things are labeled as soul which are perhaps only constructs of our minds or something else. I believe that the soul is a mysterious thing... that it is not really possible to fully access it with our finite human minds, minds which have only experienced this world and can only really think in terms of our physical existance.

I have always found myself trying to pick my way through a blackberry thicket of judgements about spirituality. I am the child of two people who experience their spirituality in two very different ways, and I always struggled with finding peace with my own expression. I have never been terribly saintly. I laugh at questionable humor, I curse when I feel like it, and I like men a lot. Growing up, worshipping God always looked a little more like fighting for equality in all of my classes and papers, singing where no one could hear me, and taking care of everyone around me. As I moved away from home, I still faught the pressure to make myself smaller, pray quietly, be calmer, learn to meditate... conform to some kind of standard of demurity which I could and can never reach. Later someone told me that all of the indecision I experienced in picking a career path was about finding a way to God and me and nobody else is allowed. That rings true. I felt and still sometimes feel drowned out by the voices of others, and it took me a long time to become comfortable with the warmth I feel in my chest when I know that things are right on the inside, despite the fact that certain parties will always find a way to disapprove.

I have been studying the 8th book in the Ruhi Institute series of study circle materials. It's called The Covenant. In its most basic definition, a "covenant" is a promise. As a person who finds herself most at home in my belief in Baha'u'llah, this word has a little more meaning. The covenant I make as a Baha'i means that my beleif in Baha'u'llah dictates that I heed the guidance of 'Abdu'l-Baha and Shoghi Effendi with unswerving loyalty. It means that I am obedient to the guidance of the Universal House of Justice, the governing body of the Baha'is of the world, and to the rest of the administrative structure of the Faith as it exists. It means that I consult this guidance before I do anything else and that I do not go out and start my own Baha'i Faith when I don't like what I am hearing here.

I want to be clear. This makes me feel safer, not less safe. This makes me feel guided and protected, not stifled. I can ask all of the questions I want, and I have the free will to walk out if I ever find that this does not feed my soul. I cannot deny, however, that this Faith frees me to be more of myself than I ever thought possible... that learning more makes me feel that this is more right, not less...

So now we come back to Book 8. There are a couple of things which have been driven home to me in the course of this process:
1. Service looks like many things, and there is room for everyone. The examples of some early Baha'is who were chosen by Baha'u'llah, 'Abdu'l-Baha, and Shoghi Effendi to serve the Faith in special capacities known as Hands of the Cause are good illustrations of the diversity of acceptable paths available. Among these individuals who were hand-picked because of their faithfulness and purity of heart, there were artists, scholars, business people, public speakers, lawyers, the more mystical-minded, more practical thinkers, and everything in between. With such diversity held up as an example, clearly there is room for me, too. Spirituality has many modes of expression.
2. On-going guidance is important. It's pretty cool that this body of believers is given instructions periodically, places to take our questions, and the direction towards consultation as a tool for figuring out the rest of this.
3. God forgive me, but I cannot sit quietly with the idea that spirituality is meant to find its only expression in oneself. I believe that the power latent in all of this soul thing is supposed to overhaul the world. I believe that I am not the only one entitled to freedom and safety and the joy of being able to choose what I want my life to look like. I believe that it is my responsibility to strive to share this and to make our world and our communities better places. The time for monks and nuns is over. The world needs work. It's not enough to sit alone by yourself and think. You have to come out and help the rest of us find our insides, too. This is another thing I love about this Faith. At this point in history, there are all of these really amazing community building tools we are learning to use, and much good is resulting, both within the Baha'i community and in the communities served.

... because I keep coming back over and over again to the idea that alone really isn't healthy. I agree with Alanis on this one... "we need reflection/ we need a really good memory/ feel free to call a little more often." At the very least, we need people to call. I went through hell this weekend, and I don't know that I could have kept it together without the knowledge that I had back-up, both spiritual and, had push come to shove, physically. I am blessed with people who have gotten into cars before to help when things were real. In a world where things happen... dark things happen... can we really find peace in the idea that inward is all that matters? Can we really confine spirituality to that place? My insides are definately a touch-stone, but I cannot presume to assert that the rest of those things are not soul... that the love between people is not soul... that the speech shared between people is not souls... that the time we spend taking care of each other is not soul. I have seen people grow back from horrible things through the simple knowledge that if they call, someone will answer. Tell me that's not soul...

response to a thank you letter

2010-12-01T10:18:00.000-08:00

You know, I wasn't that good at my job... you know, that one where I worked with those boys in that foster home. Things were not always done on time, not always done right, not always done as efficiently and effectively as possible. I did not always speak when I should have, and sometimes I spoke when I oughtn't. I didn't know everything about everything. Sometimes I was impatient. Sometimes I slipped, and sometimes I feel flat on my face. I was not infallible. I did, however, win trust. It was trust that I had to go to war and fight for, but it was, more often than not, won. It means something to be the first person to hear about something that would normally not be spoken aloud.

The thing that I did well was to create a safe space. I prayed, and then I listened really hard. I spoke truth when I felt it moving in my soul, sometimes straight into angry, pained faces... sometimes into tears... sometimes into masks fooling all the world but me. I laid a hand on a shoulder, and when that shoulder startled, I laid another hand. I expected honesty. I gave opportunities to be honest. My purse was left in plain sight, unlocked and ready to be picked up at any moment. I walked unafraid into spaces where fists were flying and tempers were hot. I was not afraid. I celebrated successes and spoke openly about failures. I demanded to see all of the cards. I looked into faces with love and never with fear.

I really feel that we are programming our youth, especially our young men, to destroy themselves and others. When we treat them with suspicion, expecting for them to be suspicious or to harm us in some way, more often than not we find our expectations met. I watched the stares of others who couldn't see past their big clothes, hard faces, and tryna-be-a-big-man struts. I watched people fumble and bumble what could have been productive encounters in which those kids could have learned more self-respect by feeling respect coming from others. I watched teachers assume that they couldn't read, couldn't pay attention, couldn't learn. I have seen reaction after reaction where the situation called for response. I have seen deep, seething hurt mistaken for anger and met with anger. If you expect them to steal, they will likely take your stuff.

If you expect greatness, it shows up more often than not. It can take a long time, and there are inevitable disappointments, but I have seen success that still takes my breath away. I have seen young men learn to speak truth in situations in which it was extra topping on the cake. I have seen God touch people in ways I didn't even know were possible.

People who have been mistreated and disregarded have not yet learned how to not make others feel that way. it is important to remember that fear looks a lot like aggression. Sometimes you just have to take one for the team, and sometimes you have to let the storm die down before you address the need for growth, but people are not born knowing how to feel safe and let down the guard. It is a skill we are taught when our mothers and fathers hold us close, smell the tops of our heads, and kiss our fingers. When not everyone gets enough of that, not everyone knows in their bones what it is to be human... to share air and space... to feel trust and give that trust in return... to feel safe and make others feel that way... to befriend and not compete... to build up and not tear down. These are skills. It is my belief that they can be taught through loud, strong, tough, persistent love. They can be taught by saying,"Yeah, you screwed that one up. I'm still here though. I can see your insides, and they are good. I expect greatness from you. I'm not kidding, I'm not scared, and I'm not stupid. Greatness."

Honestly, it isn't the active stuff we do that makes people feel supported. It's the passive stuff. It's listening while they speak. It's looking them in the eye. It's letting them simply sit in your presence without having to try so hard. You know how to non-verbally communicate welcome, ease, and approval. Why not try that next time one of them walks in? Don't react to their stares. Respond. They only look that way because they have had to defend themselves for as long as they could make sounds. Shake it up. Smile. Joke. Relax. You might be surprised, and you never know how deep that stuff goes or how long that impact lasts.

I had no idea what kind of love for God they would ignite in my heart. I had no idea what trusting them would teach me. I walked in the presence of some power. They just hadn't quite figured out their nature yet, but you could see it if you looked with His eyes...

So, kiddo, don't thank me. I don't want your praise. I want to dance at your wedding. I want to hold your children. I want to see you conquer yourself and fight for others. You are miraculous, I want the world to witness your greatness.

Dear Iran

2010-11-20T06:25:00.000-08:00

I'm having a hard time not hating you.

Seriously, it's getting really difficult. It would be easier if I could focus on your contributions to the arts and civilization, your food, your humor, etc. It's not easy, though. It's hard.

It's hard because the human rights violations in which you seem to be committed to so fragrantly committing with such self-righteousness make me nauseous. Time and time and time and time again, you go after the Baha'is. You do this for no reason discernible to the whole rest of the world. They're persecuted not because they are rapists, thieves, drug lords, or murderers. Some are in jail because they went into the Iranian hood and set up groups for educating and empowering children. They set up tutoring centers and fed hungry people. They did this in collaboration with devoted members of your own faith, Islam, and with the full blessing and understanding of the local government and without any mention whatsoever of their own religion. You are stoning your women to keep them in "their place." You are robbing your most dedicated, educated, and motivated servants of their freedom by actually keeping them in boxes. Literally, in boxes. Enlightenment, it seems, you have infinite time and resources to fight.

What gives you the right? What the hell are you fighting so hard to preserve? You have removed all access to progress and education from the multitude. You have raised entire generations of men who see it as their right use and abuse their wives and children, continuing a cycle by which Iranian families will likely take decades to recover. You have obliterated any remaining shard of respect any of us may have harbored for our culture of origin.

I listened the other day to the story of a man who had not seen his sister in 38 years. In the space of this 38 years, his sister's husband had been thrown into jail, tortured, and killed. There were two important pieces of this story for which I will never forgive you. This woman's son was hit in the head as he ran to speak with his father during one of their 30-minute weekly visits. I do not tolerate this kind of behavior towards children. Additionally, the man was executed on your orders, and you refused to speak with his wife respectfully when she came to thank you for allowing her husband release from the pain of this world. There is no excuse for that kind of behavior, and there is no excuse for keeping siblings apart for 38 years.

I also will never forgive you for my friend who had to be married in a foreign land surrounded by the family she was forced to create because you made it impossible for her to live at home. When the wedding came, you kept her father from attending. This is also inexcusable and unacceptable.

I will also never forgive you for splintering half of my family and scattering it around the globe. I will never forgive you for the pain which this continues to cause my mother, not even meeting the vast majority of her family and having no access to the land of her forefathers. I will never forgive you for bulldozing my great-grandmother's grave, as you have so casually destroyed other Baha'i cemeteries.

I am conscious that I must avoid insulting any soul, yet it also bears mention that your president may need more information before he goes to speak with other people.

I am filled with an anger which causes my soul to scream in rage. I am called by my religion to love, tolerance, and an understanding that the trials and tribulations of this world are what cause our souls to grow. Baha'u'llah says, "My calamity is My providence, outwardly it is fire and vengeance, but inwardly it is light and mercy. Hasten thereunto that thou mayest become an eternal light and an immortal spirit. This is My command unto thee, do thou observe it." I will spend the rest of my life trying to be obedient to this injunction... to understand that pain is weakness leaving the soul... to wrap my mind and heart around the idea that we are all dwelling in the palm of God's hand and that, regardless of present circumstances, He forgets no one, leaves no prayer unanswered...

Iran, Baha'u'llah promised that you have a very high destiny. Right now, though... I don't even know what to say. Only that hatred and ignorance and willful disobedience to the eternal commandments of the All-Merciful are not without their consequences, and hate and conscious ignorance of this sort are a cancer. You have to fight cancer, or one day you fall down and disintegrate. I will try to fight the desire to see you fall hard, but I won't lie. It's there.

something I wrote a long time ago

2010-10-31T06:35:00.001-07:00

Lord, i will give You this year of my life.

i will get up at 5:00am 5 days a week and drag my tired body and rebellious heart, kicking and screaming and whining, up Your mountain, through the dirt and the cats and the cold and the rain and the heat and the hamseen

the hamseen... i will breathe this dusty, polluted, foul-smelling air for a year, when i'm used to the fresh smell of the South Carolina morning by the pond with a tint of cow manure... i will drink more and more of this nasty water...

You will give me the glorious rose perfume of the Shrines... and those beautiful little white flowers that sit on the Threshold and beg me to prostrate my nose into them and breathe so deeply... until i cannot... hold... any ... more... until the perfume drives away the thoughts of any other thing that has ever filled my lungs... and my heart... and my soul... You will allow me to get lost in the warm light of the Shrine lamps, the soft, palpable flow that comes from hard, cold stone illuminated by Your light...

Lord, for You i will bite my tongue over... and over... and over again, until it hurts to be misunderstood and undervalued, because i know that the only value worth having is that which comes from forgetting myself and what i might "deserve" and moving and serving and working and striving until i ache... and it feels good...

You will give me people to hold me up, people to defend me against myself and encourage me... people to cry with me and feel this ache of wanting to give up, and the ache of knowing that the bruises will heal and we will be stronger to serve You better... people to test me and my reliance on You and forgetfulness of self, or lack thereof... people to enrich my mind with ideas i'd never conceived and places i've never been and experiences i've never dreamed of... people to love me when i don't love myself... through my mistakes, my inadequacies, my frustration, my joy...

i will give this year of should-haves, would-haves... i will do everything that i think i can... and many things that i think i can't... i will carry this ridiculous thing up those stairs... i will mop this floor that we could already eat on... i will pick up that ball of fluff, straighten that fringe, and walk back up those stairs to put the mats and the keys back where they belong...

You will put me to work on the best crew, with a schedule with no time to spare, with the strongest and most determined people so that i can become strong and determined to do... You know what... someday... i will do those pointless things for you... i'll put my cell phone on vibrate... i'll mop the spotless Council Chambre... i'll sweep the car parks... i'll hang from a rope on scaffolding, praying that You'll make it hold, while i swing into a column to get that last invisible line off the side...

You will let me see January 16th and the last week of May and the service areas on Your Arc and the Council Chambers and the offices and the terraces and the gardens and even the hairs of Your Blessed Head... i will look at the little things... that flower... that smile... that ray of light that falls just so through those windows so that my floor... Your floor... shines like the mirror on my wall... You will teach me that i can... You will give me the strength...

You will teach me that i am not responsible for how others treat me, but i am responsible for my behavior, my feelings, my actions... i will beg you to give me patience, give me love, give me strength, make me beautiful, make me smart, make me a better servant, make my hair behave, make my mind behave, purify my motives... You will give me everything i need... and even some of the stupid things...

i will thank You for a family that taught me about Your love, reliance on You, laundry, cooking stir fry, being teach-able, following instructions, communication, serving Your servants... You will further test these skills... over... and over... and over...

i will clean for 1 year of my life and pray that You will accept it... even through the grumbling... hear my soul, not my words...

You'll know what my limits are.. and You'll stretch them...and the stretching will make me give You the rest of my years...

(farewell message to the Bahá'í World Centre, June 2001 )

bits of bucket list

2010-10-27T06:18:00.000-07:00

--- kayak the Nantahala River again
--- dance at my sisters' weddings
--- ride a gondola through Venice
--- be part of a neighborhood that pulls together to improve in some way
--- have the star in my tattoo filled in with something like the flowers in The Lotus Merchant
--- visit Toyeme and family in New Caledonia/Vanuatu
--- visit Nur in Argentina
--- sing in all Baha'i Houses of Worship
--- summer in Alaska
--- dance to steel drums at sunset on the beach in the Caribbean
--- live in the mountains
--- learn to make Hollandaise sauce
--- adopt
--- grow and birth a baby naturally
--- paint my own shutters
--- plant a garden that feeds people
--- grow marigolds in my own yard
--- sleep in a redwood forest
--- "make you banana pancakes/ pretend like it's the weekend"
--- knit a scarf for each of my grandmothers
--- see a show on Broadway
--- see an opera at the Sydney Opera House
--- make a mug and drink tea from that mug on my porch in the morning mist
--- eat really good food in Italy
--- sew a dress and wear it
--- give this to someone
--- take a road trip in a fun car with a good camera and someone I love
--- journal every day for the first year of my childrens' lives
--- create and maintain a family scrapbook
--- paint something I would be proud to see hanging on my parents' wall
--- be home base

love

2010-10-26T09:10:00.000-07:00

Someone reminded me of this the other day, and I had to go find it...

I was reading The Diary of Juliet Thompson just now, and I came across this little bit that reminded me of our conversation. She was a Baha'i who lived during the time of 'Abdu'l-Baha, and she spent a good deal of time with Him, talking with him, learning from his example of selfless service and love for humanity... Juliet was in love with a Christian preacher called Percy Graves who wasn't the best of men. Abdu'l-Baha told her that she should endeavour to give her heart to God, and she said that she would, and then this happened later... and "'Abdu'l-Baha" is the title He chose for Himself. It means literally "Servant of Baha" ("Baha" meaning "glory", refering to Baha'u'llah), but Baha'u'llah called him "The Master", so He is refered to in both ways.
*
That night the Master had a supper for all who had been with Him at the Mission. It was held in His suite at the Ansonia and He took me and two of the Persians, Valiyu'llah Khan and Ahmad, in His own taxi to the hotel.
As we drove up Broadway, glittering with its electric signs, He spoke of them smiling, apparently much amused. Then He told us that Bahá'u'lláh had loved light. "He could never get enough light. He taught us," the Master said, "to economize in everything else but to use light freely."
"It is marvellous," I said, "to be driving through all this light by the side of the Light of lights."
"This is nothing," the Master answered. "This is only the beginning. We will be together in all the worlds of God. You cannot realize here what that means. You cannot imagine it. You can form no conception here in this elemental world of what it is to be with Me in the Eternal Worlds."
"Oh," I cried, "with such a future before me how could my heart cling to any earthly object?"
The Master turned suddenly to me. "Will you do this thing?" He asked. "Will you take your heart from this other and give it wholly to God?"
"Oh, I will try!"
He laughed heartily at this. "First you say you will and then that you will try!"
"That is because I have learned my own weakness. What can I do with my heart?"
And now the Master spoke gravely. "I am very much pleased with that answer, Juliet."
-- from The Diary of Juliet Thompson

peanutbutterjellytime

2010-04-01T17:54:00.000-07:00

Dear Small-On-The-Inside-BIG-On-The-Outside,

I saw a picture today.

Strange... it was accompanied by your height and weight. It was labeled with your name and something called DOB... the date listed was your birth day. Funny, right? Despite the fact that the picture looked exactly like you, the hair color and eye color were both listed as "brown". I knew then that it couldn't be you. Your hair is dark ash. It sticks up all over your head, especially in the back where it is nearly impossible to cut in a way which doesn't cause it to stick out funny, and they didn't mention that. The description would have said that because that's important. Your eyes are something like "brown", but they're a lot more like transparent. What's in there clearly doesn't have a color... or if it does, it's hurtandfightandfearandfuckyouandholdme(Momma... MOMMA!!!)... but it's not called "brown". Anyone who looked into them would know that. I knew it the first time I looked you full in the face.

That's a lie. I felt it the first time I watched you from behind, struttin down the road, back straight, shoulders squared, head tilted a little higher than necessary on what could only be a newly very tall frame so that nearly everyone would have to ask to permission to see those eyes.

Anyway, he had to be someone else's kid. If he'd been you they would have mentioned that smile that just don't quit with the under-bite and the way you look down a little when you're half-embarassed/half-proud when I'm laughing at how funny you are and how bad I'm beating you at Scrabble.

He wasn't smiling, but he reminded me of you a little.

There are a couple of bruises on that kid's face and neck. I'm curious as to where they came from... it's my nature. You know I always wanna know where things come from... always have 2.54 million questions. Remember that time you were fighting this kid, and he threw that mug at you? Poor white kid, you got that big purple bruise on your arm with that big knot under the surface. You said it didn't hurt, but you flinched a little when I felt the knot. I bet if I touched that kid's face, something sore would be on the surface. I wonder if he would flinch... I wonder if he would let me...

Remember that time you got too angry to be still? Remember how that man called you "son" and something snapped and it was all you could do to leave the room to avoid fighting him? Remember how I put you in the car and we didn't speak and we went to breakfast because I was out of ideas... and we ate pancakes and you spoke about the people whose son you are... and you experimented with syrups and I thought about how close you were to... well, to the mess that kid in the picture's in? How close you were to falling off an edge that would be the fulfillment of everything these people whose son you are had taught you?

I know that you don't remember how badly I wanted to get into that car and drive so far away...
drive until we were in a place with no cell phone reception
where none of your home boys could find you
where DSS stood for "Damn Silly Story" (or something equally descriptive)
a magical place where we could go back in time
and you could magically be 5 years old again
and I could pick you up
sit you on my lap
and hold you
while you told me all about the flowers you destroyed and where the stains on your shirt came from and how you wanted to be Superman and how slippery the tadpoles in the pond are...
where I could make sure that your hair didn't stick up in the back,
and your dreams weren't nightmares faced alone,
and you could play basketball in the yard with friends who didn't know weed was unless we were talking about dandelions,
and I could make you peanut butter and jelly sandwiches,
and you would get at least some more time before you knew what it felt like to be punched and hurt and dismally disappointed,
and I could take a bat to anyone who even looked like they might make you feel like that.
A place where someone would be able to show you what a real man looks like and how he goes about protecting and defending and representing and providing and loving.
A place where you could grow from that chubby little boy you told me you were into the very tall, strong, generous, smart, affectionate, defender of younger kids I always knew you to be.
A place where there would be pictures of that chubby little boy doing things chubby little boys do so that you didn't forget him when you grew tall like the trees.
Where your smoking of cigarettes and love of curse words really would be my biggest worries.
Where the facial hair that still hasn't grown in would be the biggest of yours.

(That kid doesn't have hair on his face either. See? It takes some people a while.)

I don't know where you are right now. I haven't really heard from you since they put you out for being so mad that you couldn't stop punching someone and too mad to talk and too big for that to be safe... except that time we went to take the SAT in hopes of leaving the college option open for some time in the future when you felt like you could take on a project other than staying alive and then had lunch and you threw bread at pigeons and laughed like someone half your size.

I think about you every day... I think about you like there's some big, dumb hole in my brain/heart the shape of your big, dumb head. I still expect to see you at the library or walking around the neighborhood or asleep on the chairs in my office. You come to mind unbidden every night when I talk to God before attempting sleep, and you walk through my dreams more often than not. I think about you every day in the breath just before I think about how I'd be out of a job if we could all get the love we need and everyone thought a little more about justice and hugs and education and prayer and training and respect and affection and pancakes and Superman and people who hold you hand when you're scared and a little less about blame and punishment and lessons and entitlement... forget back-flips on the tightrope, wouldn't THAT be MAGICAL. Bring me a circus filled with THAT.

I'm wondering if the people wherever you are know that peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are code for "I love you, and it's safe to stop acting like a time bomb." I wonder if that kid is as disarmed by peanut butter and jelly as you were. I wonder if anyone even tried that.

He really did look a lot like you.

His eyes called my name and "help" and "maybe it's too late" all at the same time, and I had to sit down outside where there was air in a hurry.

Call me. Let's start driving...

Love Always,

Welcome Back, Campers! :)

2010-03-24T20:42:00.000-07:00

So long between posts... are they even called "posts" if they come so far in between? I feel like they're snap-shots taken along the way... like maybe a series of shots taken from the car as the photographer drives way too fast so some of them are a little blurry.

I have a bit of something to say, something which I am less comfortable putting out on the internet, but I think that maybe it would be good for me to go ahead and say it in the interest of alerting others who might struggle with similar issues and need maybe to go get help like I finally ended up doing. I also realize that a lot of the judgement would probably come from people who are ignorant of disorders in the depression spectrum and don't understand me anyway. Those people are welcome not to read the following.

A year and some change ago (oh, stop it with the puns, Blue, seriously. ;) ), I began seeing a counselor. I was in yet another job I hated with a similar set of issues I had faced in my past much-hated jobs, so I finally reached the conclusion that either I didn't know how to pick a job that didn't put me into a victim position, I didn't know how to quit when I realized I was being victimized, I was imagining the entire thing and had no idea why I would do such a thing, or God hated me and wanted me to be profoundly miserable for the rest of my life. Realizing that I also tend towards the more dramatic end of the spectrum, I had been putting off dealing with this for some time, convinced that if I could just make up my mind, move, decide to "follow my dreams", think more positive thoughts, etc., I could just "snap out of it". Snapping was seeming increasingly impossible. Additionally, I had thought for years about becoming a counselor, thought I was getting close to starting the process, and couldn't stomach the idea of offering these services to another soul without trying it out myself first. After realizing that my life was poo, at an absolute stand-still, and, dramatic or not, my mind was going into increasingly depressing places, I finally, with the help of a friend/angel, made an appointment and went in.

It was a cold and rainy day (Actually I can't remember, but I've always wanted to use that line!). I found myself in a room with a white man in his 50's with profound eyebrows. Pictures of hunting dogs and grandchildren scattered the room. He sat on a wooden rocking chair and asked me why I was there. I explained that I had recognized that I had a problem. I told him that I realized that I was not struggling with something debilitating (this was a lie), that I was not in any real danger (also a lie), and that I felt like I was over-reacting a little (yet one more lie, although I still feel the need to defend this more often than not). I told him that I wanted to address the problem directly. I told him that I needed concrete assistance and that if he even suggested anything that bore a slight resemblance to bullshit, I would get up off the couch and leave immediately... something I once brought up in a session, saying that I was not sure that I would have had the courage. "You?" he responded. "Nope. You would have been gone."

Four nearly interrogation-like sessions later, the man clicked the light on. Turns out there's a word for this. Ladies and gentlemen, meet dysthymia...

The main symptom of dysthymia is low, dark, or sad mood nearly every day for at least 2 years. The symptoms are less severe than in patients with major depression, but people with this condition can still struggle with:
Feelings of hopelessness
Insomnia or hypersomnia
Low energy or fatigue
Low self-esteem
Poor appetite or overeating
Poor concentration
(https://health.google.com/health/ref/Dysthymia)

Dude, I can't tell you what happened that day. I was suddenly not crazy. I was not imagining things, not lazy, not wallowing, and not a useless chunk of human being. I had a name for the never-ending inertia... a word to refer to the constant feeling that everything was going to suck forever, that I was never going to be good enough... there's a reason I feel that I, a perfectly decent human being with a number of sterling qualities, have, beyond reason, felt like utter crap about myself every day for as long as I can remember... a reason that I felt like part of me was standing outside looking at the mopey, indecisive, underachieving me and shaking her head... simply having a name for all of this was more freeing than I can explain. Despite the fact that nearly everyone I knew would probably never have guessed it, I had been sad, stressed, and immobile for years. Perhaps that's the real tragedy--they had simply gotten used to my constant slight sadness.

Oddly enough, I had also been anti-diagnosis for years. I felt that a diagnosis made it ok to give up and stop trying to overcome something... a diagnosis was something which defined a person and made the person weak and able to make excuses for that weakness... something people did and received as an excuse for their inability to get up like the rest of us (HAHA) and accomplish what we do (HAHAAAA!). Geeeez, the air got thin up on that pedestal.

The problem with NOT having a diagnosis is that then there is nothing to deal with. I don't know how other people feel, but I felt (and still feel) that the diagnosis gave me focus. My tendency towards inertia and half-empty thinking is something which has a name. It's no longer an all-encompassing personality flaw of which I must be ashamed.

Here comes some science...
The high level of stress and transition in my life as I grew up never allowed my brain to develop steady levels of serotonin. Serotonin is the chemical in the brain which allows all of us to feel calm, safe, and like everything is generally ok. Without the regulating, one goes up and down, never feeling really safe, really calm, or really ok. Stress and mild sadness are constant. I read dysthymia described once as "an invisible Nerf bat pounding on the inside of my brain." It's not debilitating, but it makes doing anything nearly impossible. It's always in the way. Whether I had a genetic predisposition to this or not, the theory is that my brain doesn't know how to keep serotonin levels stable. Although it is possible for dysthymia to become clinical depression and require medication, the most effective route to go here is counseling. Get this-- because the brain can grow and change and all of that, I can literally re-train my brain to regulate the serotonin. It's kind of amazing to me... the brain can change behavior, and behavior can change the brain. The feelings and thoughts we have are not just ethereal things floating in the atmosphere... they are also chemical pathways at work in our brains. If I work to make my thought processes change, my brain will adapt. It's super-cool. It's actually the preferred method for dysthymia. Meds tend not to be as effective as they can be with clinical depression, but I will take the pills if someday it becomes necessary. Life is too damn short to be so sad. If it means counseling forever, then so be it. I will not lay down and be conquered by this. This is the only life on this earth I get. I'm going to do what I have to do to be able to enjoy it and make use of it.

There has been a lot of get-up-and-go in the course of my own counseling journey. I have been pushed to apply to school, pushed to make some changes in my job and personal life, pushed to analyze my family and friends and the forces at work there, pushed to address my spirituality and how it and the ways in which I choose to express and experience, pushed to look clearly at how I see my body and choose to live in it... it's so far from easy, but I'm a believer in counseling. It turns out I'm not weak. It's not a character flaw, and I'm not Debbie Downer. I'm not doomed to a dead-end and disappointing life, and God loves the hell out of me. I just need help seeing that through the now occasional brain fog. My counselor doesn't have all of the answers, but, mumbo-jumbo as it may sound, he sees me. He sees me as I've never been able to see myself, and it makes me feel like I could climb mountains. We all need that from time to time, sometimes more intensively than others... but we all have those moments in which it's just too dark, and we can't see. It's really helpful not to be alone.

My parents have each faced major health issues this year, graduate school (suprise, surprise) has it's own set of issues, work is no picnic, I'm still pretty poor, and my hormonal cycle continues to be challenging, but I feel MUCH better. My life is in motion now. I can honestly say that I have more good days than blah, and I actually like my life the vast majority of the time. I may get tired and fall into old traps of complaining, but I currently work one of my dream jobs, I am going to school to get certified to do something I know I'm my soul I was made for, and in many ways I have healthier relationships than ever before.

It's not all cotton candy... but cotton candy is unrealistic anyway. I'm just happy the Nerf bat seems to be at least taking a breather more often than not. I can't tell you how relieved I am. It's mighty peaceful in here...

It is impossible...

2009-11-17T20:36:00.000-08:00

... to explain everything which has transpired since last I wrote. Here are some of my learnings:

1. There is a reason they call it working FULL-TIME and going to school FULL-TIME. Doing both at the same time in one life results in a negative quantity of time and whole lot of half-assed assignments in both domains.

2. Our system for assisting those suffering with any kind of mental challenge and their families is one of the more broken things in our world. No one gets what they need without unimaginable pain and stress that does not let go. The only way to get through this is one breath at a time.

3. I love the boys I work with more than I ever thought it was possible to love children that did not come out of my own womb. They smell, they curse, they are involved in all sorts of destructive behaviors, they devour media whose benefit I cannot find, they only love you back when it suits them, and they have attitudes bigger than the whole sky... and somtimes things happen and they run away and I don't know where they are or if they are safe or cold or hungry or dead or injured or scared or sad or destroying themselves by some other means, and when they come home I realize why my heart was racing and I could't sleep and it makes tears in my eyes and I have to hold on to them for a few seconds and touch their faces to make sure that the peices are still attached. There are moments in every day I work there that are so fundamentally human that my heart literally hurts. Human = someone needs to listen to my story. Human = someone needs to be there for me to give my school papers to. Human = someone needs to hug me when I get home. Human = someone needs to laugh at my jokes. Human = someone needs to be delighted that I came back with both feet under me. That anyone could birth a child like any of the children in my cottage and ever give him away... ever consent to have him taken away... ever not be able to find the strength necessary to move heaven and earth for him... this baffles me. I am better able to interact with the bafflement than I have been in the past. The parents concerned cannot find the strength. Things have happened beyond their control. Most of them come from so many generations of shattered families that they do not know how to even think about being 1 of 2, let alone 1 of a whole family. The world is an ugly place, and foster care is another place where the ugly shows clearly. All I know is that if the universe conspires in such a way that I cannot adopt or have a son of my own, I think that my life will be incomplete. Seriously, I have sisters; I knew about daughters. I did not know about sons. Why didn't anyone ever tell me about sons?

4. I have the capacity to literally love anyone. This is both a blessing and a curse. I am still learning how to interact with this quality. Love is, after all, both blind and the answer.

5. EVERYTHING (from eye contact to tone of voice to words that are said to when to speak and when to not to what you say and how you say it and what color shirt you're wearing and more things even than that) about communication is cultural. There literally are different sets of rules for different colors of people, and an annoyingly small number of people are able to understand that people should be treated differently when they deliberately slight you than when they simply did not speak your cultural language.

6. The flu SUCKS. Seriously, that thing knocked me on my behind for 1 week and left me perpetually dizzy and exhausted to weak for another week on top of that. I lay there and thought, "Yep, I could see how someone could die from this. It wouldn't be that hard to die from this." Still firmly in this world, but it was truly awful.

7. I need curtains on my windows in my room. I have decided to go ahead and let this be a long, laborious process of picking some that I really love instead of settling for ones which will work but which I don't really care about. This is probably metaphorical, but for now it's about curtains. Stop judging me.

8. Speaking of judging, I do not know where single women even go to find a man. I am open to this possibility, and I feel like, despite #1, now is the time. There is a startling lack of options.

9. I hate school and everything it stands for. Who said this was about education? I've said it before, and I'll say it again; school getting grades which is about figuring out what the teacher wants and delivering it.

I think that's probably enough learning for now. I'm exhausted. My life is exhausting. I do, however, love almost everything I get to do. Who's complaining? Not me. :)

pines

2009-06-09T19:49:00.000-07:00

We were talking the other day, singing to each other about homes...

me with my voice
and you with your many souls moving, it seemed, from the trees...
called from the woods and the collective memory
of the battles you fought... the babies you birthed... the tears you cried... the pies you baked... the children you taught... the prayers you prayed... the songs you sang,
songs you sang to Him about the home you were building...
the home for when this earthly house decays...
the home for your soul because what was home now was so thoroughly painful, so systematically stifling, so all-encompassingly dehumanizing...

My soul felt called to attention by the legacy you left...
to the power you left soaked into an earth wet with your tears and blood and the sweat from your brow,
trees standing tall like strong arms holding up hope where hope might only be imagined,
air thick to stifling like so many judgment-laced glances,
so many assumptions
so many condemnations
from
so
many
sides
to a place so dark that understanding only comes in lightening flashes, gone before I can focus my eyes...
so dark that my own skin means that I can only feel it from the periphery, feel it radiating from souls walking into and out of the room of my life...
so dark that color still colors everything like a red sock in the whites...

I asked you there what I could do.
I heard your voices join mine.
You moved my heart to a place where the only desire is more voices - where the only longing left was that of throwing my life down to build the path to Him Who is the Hearer of all cries, Singer of all songs

- where I loved so much that I could not breathe -

And I felt my heart cease to beat alone.
I felt my heart cease to beat alone.
I felt my heart cease to beat alone.

*

This memory sits fresh on top of love and more love like just enough pillows made of just enough smooth softness,
and I am among your little daughters again,
and in the quiet hours of the night when one of yours comes to me and her heart says, "Speak. Tell me what you saw,"

I tell your daughter to always know that she is born of love and of strength and of love and of faithfulness and of love.
We speak of drums and prayer and sounds and souls and dignity.
We speak of the fight against the forces that seek to cover her light over with darkness, to tell her, loudly and from all sides, that her light is, in fact, darkness.
We speak of remembering what those whose skin she shares lived and died for.
I tell her that if she keeps her mind open and the conversation with Above in the front of it, she will know when it's her heart speaking.

And I tell her heart that it will hear what mine has heard.

That you are all around, waiting to be hailed.

And that, baby, we none of us beat alone.

too big

2009-05-23T06:07:00.000-07:00

Last night was one of those nights in which I was completely over-whelmed with how GIANT the task I'm engaged in is. This job and the magnitude of what we're doing here are completely on the abnormal end of the scale.

NORMAL: Mom and Dad make baby. Mom and Dad raise baby to be contributing member of society, complete with random psychological issues inherent in the process. Baby turns into adult. Adult make own choices and runs (a part of) the world. Wash, Rinse, Repeat, right?

I mean, sure there are manifold variations on the theme, but come on...

MY JOB: 3 single women in their late twenties with very little administrative support and shockingly small financial resources take turns raising 9-10 teenage girls in varying stages of crisis. Women must fight against a society which not only objectifies women but praises them for objectifying themselves, drugs, gangs, their own hormones and the hormones of those around them, an education system which has forgotten them except when it comes to punishing them for the attitudes that they developed in response to their trauma, lack of positive role models, and the persistent lack of ability to connect meaningfully to anything meaningful, not to mention a spiritual structure which, obliviously of course, doesn't recognize the profound impact of culture on the language the souls in question speak because, let's face it folks, we don't all speak the same language.

Oh
Dear
God
what
am
I
doing?

I am over-come in such moments with the fact that there's a good chance that all I can do for them is pray, attempt to shed some light, pray, love really loudly, pray, and maybe hope that something Written sticks in their heads. If they get to college or a job and not prison or immediate pregnancy, the operation will be a success.

Which in reality would be among best-case scenarios if they were of the few who actually get 2 semi-functioning parents... so does that mean that the parenting is the problem? Our parents are also under-supported, under-resourced, and, likely, having a lot of the same all-encompassing questions I am, which are really centered around one big question:

Is it enough?

To which I'm pretty sure the answer is a resounding NO. It's not enough. Simply providing for basic needs and praying for the best is just plain NOT enough... NOT enough for anyone. We are not our bodies; it's not just a material world, and I sure as hell am not a material girl... which means what? I have some ideas of some directions from guidance I'm constantly striving to immerse myself in and an ever-widening scope of what it's not supposed to look like, but it's slow going. It's very slow going.

Where is the through-line? How much of this is just stepping out on faith?

“when he went away/ the blues walked in and met me”

2009-05-13T16:54:00.000-07:00

We like to have very PC conversation about men keeping women down, women’s ways of doing things and thinking about things as superior to the male approach, equality as sameness, and the like, but current neurological research shows clearly that there are a number of very importance difference between men and women which explain many of the stereotypes we’ve grown accustomed to accepting… men don’t listen, men can’t find things, men only think about sex, men aren’t in touch with their feelings, etc. Things I’m reading and thinking these days make me sit back and evaluate these thoughts in a different light.

I’m into this new thing called a “learning mode”… you know, attempting to approach things in life, the universe, and everything with the idea that I have something to learn from an experience. It has been an exercise in humility, and I think that, as a strong and fiercely independent woman, humility is called for here… here being not just my wee life but search to find ways to understand and serve in God’s grander movement of humanity towards peace and prosperity.

There is a reason that clichés and stereotypes have become clichés and stereotypes. It’s not that they’re always true, but there’s a reason that things stick in our collective head. Apples, for example, do not tend to fall far from the tree, what goes up does tend to come down, and I don’t know about you, but I have found, at least so far, that the rains turn to pours in my life at a moment’s notice.

It leaves me wondering about what else is true, or at least indicative of a predisposition in a certain area. The differences in our brains are interesting. For example, I am told by most of the men in my life that there are times that they’re actually thinking nothing. Nothing. I am fully prepared for this never to be a reality for me. I can safely say that there is never a moment of silence in this head of mine, nor do I know any women for whom this would be false, except in moments of highly practiced meditation, during which I’m sure there must be some sort of thinking going on… mostly because I cannot actually imagine it being truly quiet. Peaceful, yes. Softer, sure. Empty? Thinking nothing? What does that even mean? Freedom from rolling over in the middle of the night to hear some random song from the day playing in your head (this morning it was T-Pain singing “I could put you in a mansion/ way up in Wisconsin/ said it’s nothing you could change your name T-Pain what’s happening”… SO troubling)? Wow. The experience in a body in which that’s not a reality would be so different. I think it’s why I can’t sleep with music on. It’s NEVER quiet in my head, and I always want to sing along, too. Who cares about sleep when you could be singing?

Anyway there are better examples I can think of once my head isn’t so full of other things, but what I’m trying to say is that strengths and weaknesses differ. What would happen if we actually looked at the stereotypes being thrown around and tried to see if what there is to learn... like what if "men don't ask for directions" might also indicate an inherent tendency towards individual initiative and individual investigation of truth. What if we looked at that as a natural predisposition to a strength instead of putting it down? Perhaps we would get farther not always jumping to emasculating our men. I'm not sure how that works, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't look like our current system.

Empowering women isn’t about disempowering men. Something in my wonders if we’re failing our men… like the standard for them must be re-evaluated in light of changes in balancing the wings, but it doesn’t mean that our men become dispossessed of their inherent strengths and skills to which they are predisposed. There has to be a way to empower both wings. Surely God created us complimentary.

something I wrote a while ago

2009-05-08T05:15:00.000-07:00

I want to start by apologizing.

I realize that it’s ridiculous.

Ridiculous that the rain always seems to make me feel as though the drops must be the hope in my life, falling from God’s grace, to be mixed with the shit on the road and run over by my tires.

Ridiculous that I become a walking question mark, italicized backwards to be always downward-sloping, always a singer of sad songs, a crier of loud tears.

Ridiculously frizzy of hair and short of patience.

Ridiculous

and so far from above ridicule from me and myself
(as I sit snickering in a corner… any corner… all corners…)

But it is truly so terribly real in those moments

I really do hurt like a hangnail,
like a limping sprained ankle,
like hair pulled during the deepest of headaches.

And the
deep,
oh-so-dark,

secret

is

that I don’t actually want you to leave me alone.

Despite how sharply I prick you when you ask to help,
how wildly my arms flail when you look at me in that tone of voice,
And how many times I insist loudly that I am strong,
that I can handle me.

I can.

But.

It’s dark, it’s cold, and I want you to hold me, whoever you are, and let me have my moment.

update of sorts

2009-05-08T05:10:00.000-07:00

I'm so entertained by the previous/first post. Once I get past the typos (there are few things that bother me more than typos in things I’ve written and put out there, only to find them, I find them… *sigh* … flawed) I've already moved some on the inside... not that I won't make more typos... just that some things have moved and shifted in the not so much time already passed. I remember the events surrounding that message, and it’s interesting to see the progress and lack thereof.

Anyway, I was talking about blogs with a friend of mine who has recently started one, and I decided that I would like to try again. I work a job which presents some interesting confidentiality issues from time to time, but I think I’ll just have to work around them. There are things I’m learning which I’d like to put out there into the world. Additionally, there is the ever-present need to be heard… something which, although dancing around that button where the defensiveness about my capacity to handle my life lies (“I depend on me”), I can’t deny. I needed my sister to read the statement I had to write for the job promotion I’m up for at work. There’s still some bit of something about this that’s just about being received.

Speaking of the job, I got the one I hinted at. I work at a group foster home as a direct care giver to 10 high school-aged girls. They are amazing and wonderful, and I there’s something fire-like about how much I love them. I do not get paid nearly what I should here (no one does, system being what it is); I recently calculated and realized that I work 50.5 daytime and 32 night-time hours and thus make significantly less than minimum wage. In other words, there are reasons that I feel poor and pressed for time. This job is also plagued by those problems inherent in top-down administrative systems which generally make me furious, as I have so very little patience for such things. It’s a recurring theme these days in a few areas, people making decisions affecting others without the benefit of consultation. I have no idea why people would want to run an organization like this without true consultation. It sounds exhausting… and actually looks exhausting. Honestly they’re trying, working with limited resources, and have the best intentions at heart. Otherwise I’d have bounced long ago… but I haven’t. It’s been hell on wheels for long stretches of time, but changes were made, and everyone is the better and wiser for it. All of this by way of saying that, while I love my girls madly, this is surely not the last job I’ll ever have.

I’ve always loved diversity and learning about different cultures, but I have developed what I would explain as a somewhat child-like love of this particular segment of Southern black culture… child-like because I am so very ignorant and shamelessly inquisitive and openly delighted with the unending poetry of speech and action. Examples, examples… there are so many… my 4.5 billion questions about what my girls are doing to their hair and how and why… how amused I am at being affectionately referred to as “Ms.Bahiyyih with her big ole head” and being accused of “cake bakin’” (flirting) and hearing boys they don’t like told to “go sit down with all of that”… the looks on their faces when I turn up the radio for a song they expect me not to like… and then there’s what happens when we go to the devotional gathering on Tuesday nights.

I have kids I thought I was never really going to connect to. They responded with a massive attitude every time I said anything to them. They refused to speak to me except when absolutely necessary. They essentially pushed me away as hard as possible, and I couldn’t find an in. I took the last of them to Tuesday night dinner and devotions the other night, and they watched my brother kill that drum and me sing until my vocal cords were done (I think we were still popping from Sunday morning at Louis Gregory… more on that later). They shouted along with the songs, smiled their little faces off, and have been absolute peaches since then. They’re glad I’m around. They want to ride when I go to drop others off. They say good morning when they get up and good bye when they go to school. It’s not over, but the door is open. Prayer works.

You know what else works? LOUD prayer. When the volume is turned up on negative influences in life, the spirit has to be louder to even be heard. The noise of the break-down of the world is almost deafening. Baha’u’llah says, “A thought of hatred must be destroyed by a more powerful thought of love.” I think that applies.

The world has dealt these kids hands that would make me throw in the cards and retreat into a corner of myself. They have not resisted most of these pressures necessarily, but my girls are not squashed. They are powerful. They meet the pain with over-flowing joy and/or a great big “f*** you” delivered with back straight and head held high. I live in a pretty permanent state of awe. It’s something that the rest of the world needs. Diversity is so healthy…

More on all of that later…

prayers, please

2009-05-07T14:42:00.000-07:00

Rebecca (Young Sister 4 of 5) is in the Philippines trying to get home, and a typhoon may have shut down the airport. Unless her swimming skills have improved significantly, this means that she may get slowed down. Things have been hard enough for her there without this.

Please pray.

prayer

2009-05-06T22:30:00.000-07:00

On days like today
In moments like this one right here

I am so in love with You
that there is hardly room for air, hardly space for what gushes forth from my every pore, barely with feet touching what surely is only a physical ground because every ounce of anything which might even at all be me is
spiralling upward
flung into bliss
spun into mad joy at You.
and where I am.
and whom I serve.
and the actions You have caused to fill my days and nights.

I love You with my bones.
I am cut open and bleeding love for your creatures.

I cannot hold You close enough, and there will never be enough words.

Historic First Post

2008-08-02T12:11:00.000-07:00

I really do want to be a blogger when I grow up.

I love it when people write things which allow a community to be created in which we discuss things which are important. I love it when these things become a vehicle by which we share a really important reality in what makes us human -- the need to connect with other humans and have tactile knowledge that we really are one people, that we are not alone, that we are not the only ones dealing with life, the universe, and everything. I love it when things make us less alone. So this is my stab at lessening the alone factor.

I've tried before to start a blog, but I always either get busier and don't take the time or feel like the venue isn't quite right. I really enjoy writing... the act of sorting and finding words for the pieces. I love reading blogs, so maybe this is part of equalizing the equation. I want this to be one of those blogs with things people enjoy reading and not just one where people catch other people up on what's going on in their lives, although some of that probably happens as a matter of course. Another thing I love about blogs is that you learn things about someone you already know when you're reading their blog. I love that the journal has become a public forum. I feel like it's a product of our society's having become more separate coupled with our inherent desire to be "heard" and "seen". (aside to self: I love that I keep mistyping "heard" as "heart.") For the whole of the rest of history people have lived close to the same home area and community their whole lives. It's only very recently that we've changed, and I think it's bad for us. I think that humans are naturally communal creatures. I think that we need each other, and I think that journaling, normally something private, has become private as yet another sign that we all want the connection. We're all wired to connect, and not connecting is not healthy... although I've seen blogs I feel like aren't healthy either, but whatever.

I am 26. I have lived in 2 countries, the US and Israel for a year when I was 18. I have 4 younger sisters who amaze and inspire me daily. I have a diverse background which has made me simultaneously thin-skinned and thick-haired, a combination which, without sharing too many details, annoys me more than I feel like a body should because I feel like I just shouldn't have to spend so much time removing issues my physical frame creates on its own.

I am a member of the Baha'i Faith, something very important which you can learn more about either by asking me or looking up www.Bahai.org for more imformation. Being a Baha'i means that I believe that it's time for us to learn how to get along better as a world. It means that I am a follower of Baha'u'llah (www.Bahaullah.org) Whose Writings say what I find to be the most profound things about God, life, our purpose, how to be happy, what unity really means, and what unity can accomplish. I am thankful for this direction, guidance, and sense of direction in my life and truly don't know what people do without it.

I am on the tails of unemployment. I am told that I am about to be offered as position which I'm not sure I can talk about quite yet, and when I do, there will be things I can't say about it because it deserves some distance from the critical world the internet sometimes is. All I'll say right now is that I've worked a few jobs by now which were things I could do for a while as I was figuring out what I really wanted to be doing. This job is not one of those. I will be starting grad school in January to get my certification in family and marital counseling, and this job is a good start in that direction. I'm excited about it, as well as curious and interested to see what will happen and where it will lead.

I'm also single. I say this with trepidation. As it turns out, I dread above almost all else (even above the idea of being alone my whole life, which makes me less like afraid and more like sad) being one of those people who can talk about nothing except how alone she is and how much she wants to not be alone... but remember that thing I said earlier about blogging making us feel less alone with our sad and more like we're sharing part of the collective human experience? I feel like that's applicable here.

I want to share that part of my experience. I have people in my life who want to be married (not just dating casually or having sex, but married, making babies on purpose, and building something) and simply can't find the right person. It is an extremely frustrating and disheartening process, fraught with all sorts of opportunities to second-guess oneself and one's worth, all sorts of disappointments and opportunities to go places by oneself, especially when the other camp in the peer group are the married-and-loving-its. I don't mind my own company, but I am a natural coupler from a big family. It's strange to me to plan and do things alone. Part of me is even a little weirded out by the transitions coming up with this job because it feels a little wrong to be making these plans alone... not wrong like "I'm doing something wrong", wrong like "this isn't the way this is supposed to go". It's not that I can't make the plans by myself (I can and am) or that I think that I can't do this alone (I can and am) or that I don't want to work (I don't, but does anyone really?) or that I had some expectation of being a soccer mom by now (I hate minivans). It's just that it's not natural for me to make plans which only include me, and so few of my dreams are ones I can complete alone. I'm not, in reality, alone. God is, of course, the Omnipresent, and I have family and a family of friends for whom I am eternally grateful and by whose love and support I am surrounded. It's just that I'm the only one building this particular life, and I can't wait to live until this part of my life looks like I want it to. Life, apparently, is and has been happening regardless of what I'm making it look like. In reality, there's so little I can do about that part of my life other than be open to possibility... and it's why I haven't really been talking about the recent life events with some of the people who are closest; if the plans are really being made alone and the life is really alone, then I need to pick where I'm going without having to wonder what my motivation is. No one else is invested, so I want the decision colored by me and God.

Anyway, so I'm going to write about this singleness part, too, even though it makes me vulnerable... and I hate how much I hate that. The world can smell fear, and I feel like every time I start to let down my guard it makes me less interesting to people... because, as it turns out, the indestructible among us are actually human, too. It's a common mistake actually. Just because I don't startle easily doesn't mean that there's nothing soft here. People get very black and white about things; I'm a strong person or a weak person or shy or out-spoken or whatever. I'm all of those things. I'm a very deliberate collector of people with the capacity to interact with that reality.

So maybe that's it for the background? Sure. Why not. It's not like I can't add more... in fact, that's totally the point, right?