insides

I have come to drag you out of your self

and take you into my heart.
I have come to bring out the beauty
you never knew you had
and lift you like a prayer to the sky.

--- Rumi

to Latte

Through a haze reeking of alcohol, I could see your insides. I could see your hands grasping desperately to hold the very end of a rope. Tears poured down your face as you told me of the hands that have always pulled you down when you tried to do something—anything—other than survive while the world wrote poems about you and stood up in coffee shops, shouting into the faces of people who might be you but also might have never, ever held the hand of a person whose insides looked like yours.

Whose outsides look like yours.

Whose latte-colored skin reminded me of swirling hips and bright colors, which in another time and place might have sounded like the marimba or steel drums or a djembe pounding out over the space while you danced (I’m sure you were dancing) and raised your arms (I can feel you raising your arms) to the sky in praise of rain.

The same rain that fell on the women of whom I am made, rain that soaked half of them through their chadors as they protected their hair and faces and honor

And the other half dripping through straw hats as they fed goats and grew tomatoes, necks burning ever redder in the Georgia sunshine.

I want you to know that I cannot feel the difference between us.

I want you to know that when I close my eyes as I hold your hand as you squeeze the raindrops from your eyes as the expert hands of a woman who sounds like my grandmother gently examine the scene of the crime

Probing, looking, gathering every detail

Taking pictures

Pictures that I’m sure look like mine. Because I am only a shade lighter than the latte that is your skin. Mine has only a drop more milk.

I saw your shoulders square.

And then I saw them curve inward when you put your hand out to help and winced as you were pushed apart, and put your hand out to stop or to not stop, as your mind fought with that hand and it just stayed there, frozen just above the sheet, holding onto the only thing that had ever been steady.

Itself.

I cannot feel the difference between us.

In that moment, I wanted to reach my hand into the center of your chest and grab your hand before you let go of the rope. I could see your fingers starting to tremble, your hand slipping off the end of the rope, eyes darting back and forth, trying to hold on, trying to make it look as if nothing was happening, covering your eyes, trying to push the tears back in, hide the raindrops, run.

I reached my hand out.

Insides screaming for you, I grabbed your hand.

Squeezed.

I cannot feel the difference between us. I can lift you. Come up to solid ground.

The Thistle & Shamrock

Scanning stations on the way home. Spring is exploding into bright fireworks at the ends of each branch. This is The Thistle & Shamrock. I’m your host, Fiona Ritchie.

Riding home in the car. Much younger. Before boobs. Before heels. Before outfits that made sense and boyfriends and husbands and career and cancer that eats vacation days and hope and vomits out emptiness.

Hair tied back tightly, but bits still escape. If I don’t hold my head just right, they whip back and forth across my face.

Sun has gone down. Cool air. Moist and clean and full of bits of green and growth. Smells like forest. Sounds like wind and airy, floating voices that seem to come from the dark itself.

We are taking the long way. The head of a sleeping sister bobs on each shoulder. The baby draped across me. The baby who is always hot. The baby who sweats. Little face plastered to my chest, blond curls blown back and forth to bumps in the road. One more asleep behind me.

I can lay hands on each of your limp, trusting selves.

Safe.

Heart full. Mind wanders.

Mother (or Monday night revisited)

I had the strongest sense today that my heart was in the Hands of Someone Whose Hands Heal. The Sense spoke in the words that poured from her as I pointed out my broken bits. In my mind’s eye, I could see her drawing herself up straight, looking right into my eyes, smelling like home, soft hands almost more familiar than my own, with that look that is clarity, and breathing directly into my center:

“There you are.

There.

Look away if you want, but between the light and the shadow, you exist.

When you forget, I will remind you.

You exist, and even when I disappear from this crust, I will see you.

I can see you.

You glow, and you are not lost.”

Seams give out somewhere not visible on the surface.  Sewing it up is truly an endless task, and the needle pricks are sometimes more than I can stand, and sometimes I have to pause, to rest, to remember why I’m sewing and not just tossing the dress of a life I’m living OUT.

It feels worn out.

I took a misstep. This wasn’t what I was making when I started, not the way the pattern was supposed to work.

Needs patches.

May be time to throw it in the rag bag.

Must have been if that seam blew…

So I stop. I put it down. I stretch, I lay flat, wiggle fingers and toes.

If all else fails,

The ground, with no help from me whatsoever, will hold me up.

Also call for help.

She can hear you over the noise.

She can always hear you.

Will always want to know your favorite color and what you learned in class today.

Will always laugh loudly at your jokes that are only funny when you’re telling them to her.

Will always read the words once you’ve lined them up again.

Also Life is, among other things, a gift.

Breathe.

Begin again.

sunset

I am sitting down to write something for me.

I'm going to write it about cool, crisp air that asks politely for a cardigan,
About the peach-colored glow lining the mountains just past sunshine,
And how I wish that I could paint the curve of the rich, patchwork gray and green and yellow of those mountains onto the insides of my eyelids...
How I can't stop taking pictures of how tall they are and how I can't believe that I can climb them even a little,
How the variation of height and texture must make them taste somewhere between the crunch of the greens I picked the other day and that chocolate cookie that looks like a child's tongue stuck out in taunting.  It is filled with what I can only assume must be clouds.  And butter.

Since I am writing for me, I will also mention how soft the grass swishes under my feet,
the way the wind moves feathery green shrubbery in a soft jostle,
that bird calling out to the half moon,
and stopping to prop my feet up on the chair in front of me.

I will avoid all mention of the list of bandaids I have been applying to this battered beater in my chest (steady, soldier).
There are still raspberries on the counter.
And poetry left to pour.

Yes, I am going to write something for me.
Just me.

Monday night

I told you.  I speak in poetry these days.

I speak in poetry because it might actually be the voice of my self… the voice that comes out when I have to put feelings to paper… have to.  The drifting colors in my mind’s eye sometimes become so loud that they must manifest themselves into words.  I, in turn, must let them out to run all over the page.

If we ever occupied the same space, you could never tell that they were all my sisters.  My skin stands in the middle of the spectrum, as full a continuum as ever there was.  There is something stronger than skin that connects me to each of these women.

There is something in their fiber… something unyielding… something that refuses to allow doubt into my mind… something that fights at the mists, tears at the veils, pulls back the layers, and shouts, loudly and to all of me that can hear:

“There you are.

There.

Look away if you want, but between the light and the shadow, you exist.

When you forget, we will remind you.

You exist, and we can see you.

We can see you.

You glow, and you are not lost.”

And when I doubt myself, you materialize as though you were waiting, watching on the out-skirts for that moment when I would find myself both trapped and under siege

One of you heard me in a dream… months since the last time we ran into each other in person, and she actually saw me, project at hand, afraid that I couldn’t.  Told me don’t be afraid.  Told me God (she calls Him “Daddy”) has given me the ability to complete anything that is presented to me.  Told me don’t argue.  Told me don’t be afraid to move and shake and change and keep on… even when you can’t see what’s over the next hill.  “All is well when we dwell in love.”

Could hear me, even through her dreams.

Another has never tolerated my wavering belief in myself… has never allowed that I deserve anything but everything… has never for a moment considered that I might not be made of gold.  I have, at times, feared disappointing her (turns out I’m only made of human)… forgetting that she sees the God in me… stays fixed on the God in me… can’t stand to hear the things I say that seem to cover up the God in me... seeks Him out.  My wavering she indulges, but He never disappoints.  And she spoke and shared and listened and reminded me, with strong conviction (she is made, among other things, of strong conviction), that my destiny doesn’t involve disregard, isn’t tied up yet, and remains open for interpretation.  My own interpretation.

I had the strongest sense today that my heart was in the Hands of Someone Whose Hands Heal. 

I was torn recently.  A seam gave out somewhere not visible on the surface.  I’m working on sewing it up, but the needle pricks are sometimes more than I can stand, and sometimes I have to pause, to rest, to remember why I’m sewing and not just tossing the dress of a life I’m living out… worn out… must have been if that seam blew…

So I stop, I stretch, I lay flat and remember that, if all else fails, the ground, with no help from me whatsoever, will hold me up.

Also call for help. 

They can hear you over the noise. 

They can always hear you.

Will always want to know your favorite color and what you learned in class today.

Will always read the words once you’ve lined them up again.

Also Life is, among other things, a gift.

Breathe.

Begin again.

To S., High School Graduate (Who is Just Getting Started), With Love from His Ms. B

S. and I met each other about 4 years ago while I was still working in a group foster home.  I still refer to him and his younger brother lovingly as "my boys," although they are rapidly approaching manhood and never really were "mine."  

I am honored that they keep me in the loop of their lives and was happy to be given the chance to speak this bit to my dear S. in person at the celebration of his high school graduation this past Thursday.

*

These people, they don't know me, so I'm going to start with a line I stole:

"Excuse my French / Emotion in my passion / But I wear my heart on my sleeve like it's the new fashion"

I also want to set our stage with another phrase:

I am enormously proud of you.

(That one's all mine.)

I also stole this line:

"Know you are where you are not by chance, but by the design of your Creator, for your own development and for the development of those around you."

It reminds me of an article I read once.

There is a tribe in East Africa called the Masaai.  Wikipedia tells me that the Maasai are an ethnic group of semi-nomadic people located in Kenya and northern Tanzania. They are among the best known of African ethnic groups, due to their distinctive customs and dress and residence near the many game parks of East Africa.  They speak a language the name of which I cannot pronounce that is a member of the Nilo-Saharan language family that is related to Dinka and Nuer.  The Masaai are also educated in the official languages of Kenya and Tanzania: Swahili and English.

They have cultural traditions that look nothing like ours.  Or at least that's what it looks like when you just look with the eyes that allow you to see only the surface

The Masaai distinguish the men from the boys.  Becoming a Masaai man involves these special rituals with special clothes and special colors and music and behaviors.  The men in this culture tend animals, hunt other animals, and fight to protect their home, their women, their children.  They do that fighting with spears, with knives, and with their hands.

Now, back to my article. 

It was about a young college student named James Nampushi.  Mr. Nampushi said:

"I must work hard.  I must work hard.  This is a miracle to me.  To be here, is God.  I must work hard because I know where I came from and where I am now.  So I have to do something..."

S., there is something you have in common with this man beyond the fact that your skin color is much closer to his than it is to mine.

S., you must work hard.  You must.  That you are here, this is God.  You must work hard because you know where you came from and where you are now. 

The last part is the clincher: So you have to do something.

You and Mr. Nampushi.  You both have to do something. 

Mr. Nampushi grew up in the tribal Masaai community that taught him certain things about what it means to be a man.  He learned these things, and then he decided that the salvation of his people in a world that is growing by leaps and bounds involved, at least in some small part, continuing his education in a land far, far away from his comfort zone to learn things that the people in the culture he came from couldn't teach him.

Things that he had to learn for himself.

From himself.

From the rest of the world.

From people who were different from him.

Sometimes drastically different.

Ms. B, what's your point?  I can hear you asking with your eyes, kiddo.

Here comes the preachy part.  Get ready.

Know this:

As a Black man who grew up in an urban environment and finished growing up in foster care in South Carolina, the statistics that you face at this critical juncture of your life are damning.  Do not, do not, DO NOT LET THIS LIMIT YOUR EXPECTATIONS OF YOURSELF.  Push the messages of thug life, victimization, materialism, the voices of entitlement and violence, as well as the voices that tell you that because your skin is brown your brain was not made to process just as much information as anyone else walking around away.  Throw them away.  Ball them up, tear them into shreds, and incinerate them.  Open the windows of your life, and blow the ashes out into the breeze.

Know this:

God has done a lot to bring you to this point.  You and I can both think of times in your life when He could just as well have abandoned you in one way or another.  He didn't.  Think about that.  Think about what it means that the All-Knowing, All-Wise Provider and Creator of All decided to hang onto you.  Decided to provide the hearts of all of the people in this room to love you and believe in you and try to show you what you are made of.  Do you think that this was an accident? Think about it.

Know this:

You have been blessed with a voice.  You have choices about how to use this voice.  By now surely you have learned that people listen to you.  Consider what you hear, consider the biggest picture you can, and choose your words and actions wisely.

Know this:

Your academic achievement to this point has not been indicative of your capacity.  We both know that, and now so does everyone else in the room.  I get it; you were busy with other things.  Your childhood included more violence and loss than mine, and your prefrontal cortex, the part of your brain that makes plans and provides motivation, has been otherwise occupied over the past few years. 

I've got news for you.  You've landed.  From now on, not nearly as many things are going to be handed to you as you're used to.  You're going to have to prove that you deserve them.  You're going to have to put your shoulder to the grindstone and push.  Go show us what you can do.

Actually, forget us.

Show yourself what you can do.

I am proud of you.  I don't have enough words to be able to tell you what it does to my heart to see you graduated... to know what I know of your story, to see you tall and strong, to see your clear eyes looking off onto the next thing... proud isn't the right word.  I am blessed.  Blessed and richly favored.

Don't mistake this for a stopping point, though.  True, you get to pause, be congratulated, and look back at how much road you've covered... but, baby, it's so far from done.  It's really only the beginning. 

Go.

Go get it.

Go get into it and on it and all over it.

There's work yet to be done.

We're your tribe... we're your people... and we need you. 

And by we, I mean the world.

Kindness

Kindness

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things, feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the
Indian in a white poncho lies dead
by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you, how he too was someone who journeyed through the night
with plans and the simple breath
that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness
as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow
as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness
that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day
to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
it is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you every where
like a shadow or a friend.

-- Naomi Shihab Nye

Thank you for sharing what you found, Sara... 

(You can find her words at http://mygreatleap.blogspot.com/)

Dear 30

Dear 30

Be kind.

Remember how when I was little
All of my dreams of you involved mommyhood
I had babies, birthed babies
Babies with arms and legs and hearts to love
Babies I held and nursed and chased around
Catching them before their chubby little legs gave out

Remember how when I was little I thought that my dreams would surely come true

Everyone has a dream
Everyone draws this dream out
Colors it painstakingly in marker
Labeling each part lovingly
hopefully
greedily
carving out the shape of the future
with assurance that my carving was supposed to happen
would happen
happen (shrug) to everyone
That's why they make dreams

The truth that I was working in the medium of mist
Utterly lost

Or ignored?

30, be kind.

Sometime between now and the morning and always

I will forget.

I will forget that I awoke to clean sheets
Sunshine
Bursts of hydrangeas in the back yard
A real fountain spilling real water

That I arose, cooked whatever I wanted
Made my own coffee
With not one, but two heaping spoons of real, raw sugar
Just enough cream

That I walked outside to remind my toes how much we love the feeling of the ground
Kissed the flowers with my eyes

That I raised my arms and stretched each bit of this body
I will forget that my hair shone in that sun
That my soft curves may have actually hugged a thousand people
And will hug a thousand more
And a thousand after that

I will forget the inestimable blessing of raising this voice
(Where did it come from?)
in praise of the All-Merciful
He Who, from everlasting, knew the pattern imprinted on the fabric of my soul
Who fashioned me from nothingness
Who makes my heart to beat
Who fills my lungs up with love
And makes me to overflow

I will forget that I live in safety
Sleep peacefully with my windows open
Dream sometimes of the gardenia blossoms outside my window
And of swirling colors

I will forget that a tall, unutterably kind man daily wraps his arms around me
Whispers his love into my ear
Listens to my secrets
Keeps them close to his heart
And proves worthy, again and again and yet again, of my trust

I will forget that there are small children I get to auntie
That I remember the way their small selves fit into the crook of my elbow while they napped
That aunties get to shower with gifts
And tickle
And teach
And listen
And search out lost smiles
And keep stories safe
That I get the chance to serve families
To support friends in the hardest of jobs
To build community

I will forget that this time in my life involves indulgences
Material indulgences
More than I need
More than so so so so many have
All that
And spiritual meals including dessert
every day

I will forget.

Be kind.

Remind me that you have brought me
Running
Sailing
Swimming
Floating

Here.

On purpose.

Remind me that there is still time to hold my own babies in my arms
That there is time to replace those dreams with other dreams
That I have choices

Remind me that I am loved from more directions than I ever dreamed
That I have more souls to thank than I will ever have time

That the voice you placed in my head and my heart will be useful
Has been useful
Is useful

That the next 30 won't be measured by a child's mist carvings
And are made of something that stretches "... in front of us and behind us, above our heads, on our right, on our left, below our feet and every other side to which we are exposed."
Something stronger than mists
That bends.

How if Flew from Her

From her mouth. It gathered its small, soft body and leapt

froward, up and out. And then it was gone. She knew
because of the dark hollow in her chest, like the place a woodpecker makes,
keeps making, until it’s emptied the wood of food
and moved on. She didn’t try to stop it, because she didn’t know
what it was; what came from her mouth
looked like a white moth, the kind that eats wool, so she clapped her hands,
chased it to the window, pulled the shade down
and pretended that was that. It’s surprising it stayed
as long as it did, because most of all, she made it wait. She made it wait
while she beat a dead horse, hit the nail on the head, drove her point home,
split hairs, threw fat on the fire, killed birds with a stone.
Naturally, it grew tired of waiting,
tried to tell her, made a few practice runs, beat its wings;
she could feel it, don’t tell me she couldn’t, she could hear
the wings beat. She still feels it, like when you lose an arm or leg
and it aches but there’s nothing there
to ache. That’s how hollow she feels. She talks a lot, laughs
with her mouth open wide. Not everyone knows why,
but I do: she’s making a place for it to come back to.

–Amy Dryansky

Thanks, Mighty Girl

shattering

Thoughts from this year's Baha'i Fast, March 2-20...


Fasting.
Fasting.

Fasting.

This morning I was looking for a quote to along with the pictures I've been taking every morning... the pictures I've been taking to set some kind of stage, to have some kind of baseline from which to address this time... to speak to a small corner of the world and to myself what is happening on my insides.  This leaped off the page:

"It is essentially a period of meditation and prayer, of spiritual recuperation, during which the believer must strive to make the necessary readjustments in his inner life, and to refresh and reinvigorate the spiritual forces latent in his soul. Its significance and purpose are, therefore, fundamentally spiritual in character."
-- Shoghi Effendi 

Every year I struggle... every year.  

Every year I never make it through the whole thing, end up breaking somewhere in the middle into shards the shape of myself that are then blown to the winds while I stand, grasping, gasping, looking for some kind of net... harrowed... dropping whatever was in my hands (or what was left of my hands) to try and pluck the shards from the air, assemble them into a neat pile, and systematically put myself back together... back together... back together...


Inevitably with pieces missing.


... and I realize then that this is just what was supposed to happen.  It's always what's supposed to happen.  This shattering, this scattering, the blowing of the wind all to remind me of what matters... what is salient... what is heavy and substantial and real and true and at the core and will keep me grounded... what will resist the blowing, the eventual shattering...


... and there is something that I love about articulating, even inarticulately, what this feels like.  What it feels like in the settling of the water after this yearly wave crashes over my life... 

spinster poetry

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

Like it or not, 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, Love, 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.

Honey, 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.

Baby, I will sing you that song 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 we didn't get to do the dishes together,

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

for every time someone else made a mess and you were the only one there to clean it up,

for all of that time spent in the car without having someone to read all of the signs to,
for the stupid puns that you never got to tell me,

for the time you spent sleeping on basic-colored sheets wrapped in that college student comforter.  
Sugar daddy, it’s called a duvet, and cotton sheets feel just like this.

You can read about them in my poem.

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

for every card you never got to leave for me on the kitchen counter,
for every time there was no one to scratch your back until you feel asleep,

for every time you had to sit through the guys complaining about their girls 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 had to patiently make peace,

for every time you lost patience,

for every time you almost gave up.

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

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

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 was 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,

pines

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.