This Wonderful Friend of Mine

“Promise me you'll always remember: You're braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think." --Christopher Robin to Pooh

Let Me Be Specific

I gotta thank G-d.

and I gotta let you know exactly what I'm thanking, though I can never communicate exactly what it is that's turned rust to gold.

But I'm going to try because I gotta thank G-d.

There have been moments in the last five months when I didn't think I'd make it out alive, moments where I wept in the darkness of the coldnest night, clinging to some distant hope of any moment less physically painful. This back injury has taken me to the precipice of my faith in life and pushed me over the edge. There have been mornings when I woke up only to hate the idea of moving out of bed because I could feel the futility of motion and the death of the possibilities for the next 24 hours accompanying that restricted motion.
I held the phone to my ear, crying out, wailing, sighing--heard in my worst periods of struggle by faithful companions who would remind me: it's not always going to feel like this. They'd ask questions like: what color is the pain? does it have a message for you? And when I couldn't answer because the agony ripped my voice away, they'd just listen to the wimpering in silent devotion.

And then this morning, after receiving an injection of steriods three days ago, I woke up okay.

DO YOU HEAR ME?

I WOKE UP OKAY. MOBILE, PAINLESS, FREE. Today. Yes I did.

And I gotta thank my beloved. Hear me: I thank G-d.

I thank G-d for the chemicals in that shot. I thank G-d for my spine specialist and all the researchers, medical experts and makers of bio-medical technology that enabled that injection to be administered. I thank G-d for my friend Debra who took me to my appointment on time and let me cry--hard--when it hurt me and I didn't believe it was going to help. I thank G-d for every single person who prayed healing prayers for me. I don't care the words, the tradition or the outcome of those prayers. I'm grateful to G-d for people who give a shit enough to think of someone else's pain and to place their intention into the arms of something greater than themselves in order to be useful for the purposes of love. I thank G-d for my mother who told me she'd take care of me no matter what and payed my first month's insurance bill because I was unemployed. I am thankful to G-d that I even have health insurance. I thank G-d for the loving, gentle suggestions of mentors, friends and faith companions since the injury occurred in March: keep writing, keep walking, keep talking about it. I survived because of those suggestions. I survived because of that care. And I gotta thank G-d. 

I am surviving. I gotta thank G-d. I hope you hear me.

The Plague Upon This House

Ultimate irony:
you water the plants, feed the birds and make the bed upon which both of you sleep
yet she remains parched, unfed, and restless
wishing a love between you, once alive and life-giving
might awaken again.

Hollow soul:
what has deadened you,
positioned your body in defense
and closed any possibilities for openness?

I witness
and find this poisonous ruptured relationship
a challenge to my pastoral stance.
What can I do to heal such cantankerous hostility?
How might I occupy the triangle without being torn apart by it?
What prayers might move against the tides threatening to drown her heart?

Link to Patheos Advent Series

Here's the link to the Advent series I'm doing with Corbin & Tai Amri. Check it out. Comments welcomed there or here.

http://www.patheos.com/Resources/Additional-Resources/Advent-Intentionality.html

Waiting on the Christ of compassion to come...

Ejoye

Dying to Believe

November 5th, 2008.

We gathered, about 12 all together, in a tiny living room
in a tiny apartment. We were on the second floor.
Below people began screaming, so we went to the windows.
My mom called. She was crying. East Coast got word first.
Then they--John Stewart and Steven Colbert--announced it.
You won.
My living room companions clapped. Some yelled.
Some jumped up and began running around. I just wept and wept. I couldn't believe it.
You won.

The acceptance speech put us all in check; you knew the work cut out for you
and didn't hesitate to tell us about it. Further humbled by your grace,
the spirit of reverence for responsibility took hold. For a moment we were silent.
The screaming below got louder and louder, so we hit the streets.
We passed around ideas of where to go: Jack London Square?
City Hall? 20 minutes later we joined other political wanderers
at the corner of Broadway & Grand, right outside Luka's Taproom.

All the colors and queers began drumming, dancing and sanctifying the intersection.
Oakland's finest were in full effect. No censoring or controlling the movement that night.
The people owned the pavement, for once. Police officers put up their barricades for us, for you.
They actually let us get rowdy. People wrapped themselves in American Flags and circled
the community. Black people held each other like tearful lovers reuniting after years apart.
The old long-haired white hippie left-overs from the 60's crowded together with candles.
Even the punk-rock bandits poured in offering shouts of joy.
You brought us all there, that corner in Oakland, on that day.
You won.

In the middle of the celebration I recalled the moment I turned the corner on you.
When John Legend sang at the National Democratic Convention, he used these words:
"I'm dying to believe that you're out there."
As a theologian I reflected upon the rhetoric of hope,
the possibilities for transformative political leadership,
a shift in my generation's attitude toward agency and change--all the things you stood for
and all things bigger than you.
We wanted justice.
We wanted diversity in leadership.
We wanted grass roots movement.

People worked tirelessly for you, dying to believe that what you offered might actually come true.
And it did: that night when you won. We danced our assess off and screamed our lungs
into scratchyness the next morning. On the corner of Broadway & Grand, we prayed
our gratitude for the "new thing" happening because of your willingness to lead us.

December 2nd, 2009
$1.08 trillion total funding for "both" (as if we're only occupying 2 countries) wars through fiscal 2010.
30,000 troops on their way to Afghanistan as of your declaration last night.
98,000 proposed U.S. troop level in Afghanistan in total.

I don't think you want this, deep down. Somebody must own you. I say institute the draft, right now.

This morning I saw the headlines--I was leading an Advent workshop last night
and couldn't hear your speech (how ironic)--and felt a gut-wrenching spiritual ache.
The ache of disillusionment.
The ache of wondering if we all got fooled into thinking it'd be different.
The ache of wondering if you got fooled into thinking you'd be different.
The ache of pondering how it feels to be a citizen today
given how it felt to be a citizen on the corner of Broadway & Grand on November 5th 2008.

I'm dying to believe that you're out there, that you are still the person I worked so hard to elect,
that you care about the working class, and people of color and you wouldn't sacrifice
your principles to put them on front lines for money or any other pimped out virtue.
I'm dying to believe that you're out there, that you think about Iraqi, Afghani and Pakistani
children when you look into Malia and Sasha's eyes.
I'm dying to believe the hope we birthed wasn't a waste.

World AIDS Day

Hey all:

I wrote an article on my experience in CPE (clinical pastoral education) for the PSR (pacific school of religion) bulletin. If you want to check it out, hit the link below. I'd love to hear your comments on this site. Happy reading.

http://www.psr.edu/war-and-peace-my-year-clinical-pastoral-education

Yours in the struggle(s) for peace,

eJOYe

Loving Life The Way it is Right Now

Friday was the last day I couldn't drive nor walk around the block more than once. Friday marked the difference between laying flat and being able to stand (somewhat) straight for more than three minutes. Friday my pain level went from a 9 to a 6 1/2--the qualitative distance between those levels for my body mirroring the quantitative distance between states like California and New York on a map. When you've got nothing, you get tremendously grateful for something even if that something would have felt pathetic before you lost everything. Back to Friday.

Makes sense that my spiritual director would usher in the period of transition, the transition from immobility to inches-given. We were supposed to have dinner in Oakland but there was no way I could drive up from Palo Alto, so we decided to talk on the phone. She's a magical human being, my spiritual director. Even so, it took me 30 minutes to get honest about the struggle, 30 minutes to admit my despair and absolute bewilderment. At first I hesitated. I didn't want to use the word "unemployment" because she used to be my boss. I didn't want to use the words "lack of faith" because she's also now my pastor. I didn't want to tell her how bad my back pain had been the last 4 days, how only 2 days ago I'd begged my physician for Morphine and when he refused to order the shot and told me to go to the ER (how can a person with level 9 pain drive themselves to the ER?), I'd asked G-d to give me death. I thought she'd be disappointed. She's the kind of person everyone works hard--i mean hard--to avoid disappointing because she's grace-filled, beautiful and dependable. Because she is these things, she asked the questions that coaxed me into honesty. She asked if I'd been writing. I said no. I couldn't write because I was too ashamed.

Then we began talking about the lives of pastors: what they do, not just how they work within the walls of a congregation. She talked about vocation being larger than employment, particularly in the ministry. Pastors are people who bring theological and ecclesiological reflection to all aspects of life, not just the life of a congregation where they are employed. We look at all struggle and victory, all brush-ups with grace and evil with several things in mind: 1) our people 2) our G-d & 3) the intersections between the two. I began talking about how this struggle with getting a job, with getting adequate health care, and dealing with chronic pain have given me a wider circle of compassion. I told her about my new found empathy for people who have to be on disability, people who spend too much time staring up at the ceiling because that's the only option they've got. I told her I would never, ever, in the future forsake the blessing of having a job. I told her I would never forsake another pain free day. She then asked if I would be willing to write during this time as a way of providing testimony, as a way of pastoring from the wilderness.

G-d knows I am not the only one in the wilderness right now. In fact, my wilderness looks like a nicely trimmed vineyard in comparison to some people's struggle these days. I may be moving back home, but at least I've got a financially stable family to welcome me back. I may be without steady employment, but I qualify for federal help that's enabling me to pay my bills. My skin color, education level, class privilege and body ability guarantee me a future within my denomination that, unfairly, many cannot claim. I may be leaving the Bay Area where countless friends and memories hold my heart, but at least I've made those connections and dwelled in that precious space at all. Amidst the struggle I am both grateful for what I have and committed to fighting against those things holding people in greater bondage than I can even comprehend. I will not allow this time of suffering to isolate or silence me. Thanks to Marjorie's suggestion, I will use this time to connect, to express, to fight, to hold on, and yes, to love G-d. Therefore, this blog space will serve as a key portal for these attempts to break open and to reach you.

There’s more…

On Saturday I actually survived the drive to the East Bay. I had the opportunity to write and direct the communion liturgy of Michelle Haris-Gloyer's Ordination service. I love Michelle. Working with her on any liturgical project feels like breathing sacred air: it just flows. We blended the traditional institution of the Lord's Supper with the language of 2 Cor 4. We relished in the patterns and poetic flow of those two texts in conversation. Michelle desired "multiple voices at the table" so we invited 8 servers to participate in the spoken word. The actual delivery wasn't perfect (well, im*h*o) because we only had a few practice runs, but the process of relationally engaging, envisioning, writing and rehearsing reminded me of why I want to do ministry. There's no greater joy(e) than experiencing the burst of novelty at the intersection of tradition and innovation. No greater love than worship. I may not be “in the church” but my heart is in this work, no doubt.

After the service I ran into Christina Hutchins who is pastor, poet, theologian, philosopher and all-around goodness. She's the person who throws out Koan sayings that knock you spiritually senseless one minute and then 20 minutes later comes up with an absolutely irreverent joke that makes you laugh so hard you almost pee. I adore her. Anyway: we hadn't seen each other in a while and she asked me how I was doing. I gave her the 1 minute version of "jobless, in pain and moving home to my mother's house." She looked me deep in the eyes and said "you could practice loving your life the way it is right now." In some ways I think she was taking me to the same core principle that Marjorie ushered me into on Friday night. Her words stayed with me for 3 days, read: they actually meant something.

Ever since I've been wondering about the practice of "loving life the way it is right now." What does it mean to actually do the work of loving something that feels so damn bad? This question, this meditation of sorts, has thrown me "back to the basics." Yes, it's letting the "test become testimony" (as Marjorie would say) and so yes, the loving is about expression and writing. But mostly: it's about paying attention. And I can only pay attention to the present moment because the future is a downhill-rolling-fear-filled-snow-ball phenomenon if there ever was one. I am looking and listening more deeply today than I ever have. And guess what?: the practice is saving me moment to moment.

I'm here to testify: the present moment contains the most G-d you'll ever find. Thank you Marjorie, Michelle, and Christina.

In the coming weeks and months I am going to practice gratitude in this blog space. The practice of gratitude is about intention, about paying particular (intentionally appreciative) attention to the present moment. The practice of gratitude is the practice of “loving life the way it is right now.” And, hey, it’s seasonally appropriate. My hope is that you will continue checking in and that you will share your gratitude (or anything else you want) in this space as well. I am particularly reliant upon this space to hold connections as I transition from the Bay back to Southern Cal. I want to keep loving your lives—just the way they are right now—too. Be in touch, beloved,

Advent

(Hey all: I've started an Advent writing project with Tai Amri and Corbin. This is my first post. My boys will respond on a webzine called Patheos. I will post the link later and if you find interest in this material, check us out.)

Advent, the season that includes both religious holiday and secular consumeristic spin-outs, is a time of preparation. For Christians in particular, this is a time to halt, a time of pause, a period of waiting. But we do not wait for waiting's sake. We await the event of incarnation, a birthing of divinity and humanity in the world. We move collectively during this time of preparation, as a people, toward the promise of Christmas. Like any other liturgical season, Advent takes form in our lives through practice. We practice Advent. And again, like any other liturgical season, the practices of Advent take on drastically different forms given the Christian sect/denomination/community wherein they are being ritualized. For instance, while some Christians will pray, light candles and open miniature calendar doors each evening during Advent, other Christians will spend the bulk of Advent shopping for gifts, preparing meals and attending bi-weekly church services. It's all about context.


The diversity of Advent practice is made more complicated by the undeniably far-reaching reign of commercial industries capitalizing on this time in order to make a profit. We hear Jingle Bells set to Best Buy's advertisements, see GAP models adorning cute little santa hats in order to sell ordinary blue jeans, and find Christmas Blend coffee stocked heavily on the shelves at any local Starbucks. With equal force, those finding the man of Nazareth missing from this holiday extravaganza, step in the streets with their "No Christmas without Christ" signs or "Jesus is the reason for the season" buttons. All of these things—pious prayer, corporate cash-ins and religious resistance to consumerism--are about the practice of Advent. There’s a spectrum here and quite honestly during my 28 years of Christianity I’ve probably gone to the extreme on both sides. Today, after seminary training and years of work in the field of ministry, I find myself somewhere between unconscious consumerism and self-righteous blasting of all-things-Capitalist. I find myself practicing the “middle way.”

There's meaning to be found in buying just the right gift for just the right someone, even if you find that gift at Best Buy. There's value to be found in lining up and resisting the forces of classism, homeless and hunger in our city streets--and doing that resisting in the name of Christ precisely because Jesus came into this world through a homeless, unwed, pregnant, teen-age girl. Reverence for life and reverence for the liberation made known in Jesus can increase with every candle lighting, every sung version of "Oh Holy Night." However, there’s the danger of “going through the (Advent) motions” just to get through the holidays. This is the danger of meaningless habituation that accompanies any ritualistic activity. We can pick gifts off the shelf without thinking much about the person receiving them or where those gifts were made and under what conditions. We can prepare a Christmas meal for our extended friends and family because we’re supposed to, not because we actually want to. We can go about the obligatory, business as usual practices "we've done every year," or we can go about the work of checking our intentions. Perhaps the most faithful discipline we can engage as we approach the season of Advent in 2009 is the practice of Advent intentionality.

As a progressive Protestant I’ve seen the shortfalls of “thinking” about religion—my people are notorious for thinking themselves right out of holy living--and so I am not advocating a more heady way of approaching Advent. Instead I’d like us to consider that we’ve always practiced Advent and there’s something to be discovered in revisiting those practices with the lessons of faith we’ve learned in the last year. Certainly this will lead us to change some practices and to hold onto others with greater appreciation.

Seeing the Doc. Seeing the MRI. Seeing the future

To put words

when he sheepishly avoided my mother's question about long term prognosis

To put words

to the color chaos--where white should have totalized, no, greyish black moss

To put words

where potrusions illustrate this screaming, aching, knifing, killing, pain that's been and been and been

I cannot.

The River

"It's grief. They want you to have some normal response to grief, you know, so they don't have to watch. But it's mine."
--Henry Carter portrayed by Kevin Spacey in the movie Shrink.

Three days ago…

While walking next to my girl Maritza through the streets of the Mission District in San Francisco on Dia de los Muertos, I realized something profound was happening. Painted skeleton faces. Candle luminaries all around. Packed crowds full of mourning, carnivalesque pilgrims communing with their dead. Skull and bones etched upon elaborate altars made from scratch. They call the march a "processional." Here the boundaries of life/death, religion/secular, sadness/celebration, here they go blurry. Here the isolation of grief meets its eclipse. I turned to her and said "Pretty prophetic for a culture that doesn't want anything to do with grief."

We don't grieve because we refuse to face the unnecessary damage we accumulate through unnecessary war, unnecessary violence (read: racism, sexism, neo/colonialism, heterosexism), unnecessary consumption/production practices, unnecessary distancing, unnecessary silencing. Our refusal multiplies the contents of grief. So we accumulate and accumulate and accumulate and the buried dead, the relational deaths, the sorrows of significant and untended loss—they whisper, call out, scream and haunt. They haunt, hoping we will wade in the water, hoping we take seriously the things we have loved, hoping we will not turn away.

Maritza nodded. She knows a lot about death and dying and grief--and about the murderous silence often accompanying them. She works for/in the Latino/a community, in the field of AIDS prevention and outreach. She lost her brother. She knows. She uses the language of "crossing-over" and while that language is foreign to me, it communicates so honestly the trespass, the back-flipping liminal space that momentarily exists when what's lost comes alive again in memory. This is the real stuff of resurrection. Christians should make this street their classroom and put down their pathetic theories of heaven. She bends down and gazes into the altar constructed for Cesar Chavez. She takes pictures and lingers. His work is her work. And I witness her witness, his resurrection inside her wide-open heart. And this: my gaze upon her adoration, this is the work of mourning together, the hard, sometimes almost impossible work of staring at and seeing loss without trying to strangle it, or put a wall up in front of it, or shooting someone because you refuse to feel it. This is the radical and creative motion necessary for the ash to penetrate the earth while giving permission to its surrounding soil: yes, let something new bud here.

If we create space for each other, if we allow our companions the dignity of grief, without attempts to control or fix or minimize, we might possibly end the ceaseless marches to war. We might instead, begin floating in a river that changes its pace, follows no predetermined direction and therefore promises no security, and sometimes gets colder than we can tolerate. But the river, the river will deliver us.

Welcome to the World Little Ones

For Isabella, Gabriel & Alex, Clementine, Elanora (and some still on the way...)

My friends are having babies. Many many babies.
And what is there to do but become enamored with
the possibilities born of our world
when wonder and grace filled people
make the radical decision to multiply?

It's radical. It is because our world quickly crashes
any naive eschatology promising safety,
painlessness or gauranteed success
for any child. Any child.

Here they are anyway, their mere existence a testament of hope
reaching from the guts of sperm donors, mommy bears
and delivery dancing dads.

My soul stands up, claps, and refuses to sit down
even when the ovation has grown long and others have begun to subtly
gesture their tired and time-bound allegiance.
Keep standing, I say! This is the stuff of true celebration, of worship.

And if we are not indoctrinated into new types of responsibility
by the mere announcement of pregnancy,
then shame upon shame,
for these are the holy whispers of futures untouched,
members of a new order,
a new order that altars our world and
asks of us new symbols, gestures and language, asking:
what do you, dear pilgrim, bring to this table?

They have come from bellies over-swollen and
ribcages close to collapse, from mothering giants overwhelmed with discomfort.
They have come impossibly, through pain and tearing and sleepless nights
to awaken the dead and sluggish from their slumber,
to announce the myriad of miracles in flight,
still searching for open hearts to occupy.

Welcome. Welcome.

Grief

This is long overdue. Thank you for waiting. The classroom you extend requires the utmost of presence.
The reading, writing, and interpretation listed on the syllabus are not optional.
There is no graduation, just continuation.

See then why it took me so long to take my seat.
Oh that I had learned your lessons earlier
and avoided the ice castle constructs blocking me from genuine freedom.
I did not know your liberty because I was too afraid to surrender.
Forgive me.

You promised to set us apart, to help us stand up, to redeem our unbelief.
But I did not hear, too consumed with fix-it faucets slowly leaking the lies
of cheap repair, too consumed with the mythical protection of hard-heartedness.

Worn thin, out of ideas, I could no longer deny your power or invitation.
There came a moment when “do or die” went from slogan to maxim,
from sure I guess to unequivocal yes. I broke. You seduced. I came.You delivered.

I should have known.

When I was wrecked with nothing left you unraveled
with my slightest consent and made new the deadliest spot within.
I was surprised. Some days I forget only to return again on my knees.
You are generous.

I should have known tears would be the solution,
wordless exhaustion and admittance of despair my redemptive hope.

I have not received a grade, rather a summons
to participate in the most revolutionary of movements,
one that re-members me over and over again
in the faces of suffering, in the dust surrounding bodies torn apart
from rape, war, and neglect.
Sustained in this world without end.
Amen.

Monja Blanca by Clive James

Ejoye's note: I read this in the New Yorker a while back. The last two stanzas read like apophatic theology and I have given "bold" to my favorite lines. Herald the dope. Peace and power my people.



The wild White Nun, rarest and loveliest

Of all her kind, takes form in the green shade

Deep in the forest. Streams of filtered light

Are tapped, distilled, and lavishly expressed

As petals. Her sweet hunger is displayed

By the labellum, set for bees in flight

To land on. In her well, the viscin gleams:

Mesmeric nectar, sticky stuff of dreams.



This orchid’s sexual commerce is confined

To flowers of her own class, and nothing less.

And yet for humans she sends so sublime

A sensual signal that it melts the mind.

The hunters brave a poisoned wilderness

To capture just a few blooms at a time,

And even they, least sensitive of men,

Will stand to look, and sigh, and look again,



Dying of love for what does not love them.

Transported to the world, her wiles inspire

The same frustration in rich connoisseurs

Who pay the price for nourishing the stem

To keep the bloom fresh, as if their desire

To live forever lived again through hers:

But in a day she fades, though every fold

Be duplicated in fine shades of gold.



Only where she was born, and only for

One creature, will she give up everything

Simply because she is adored; and he

Must sacrifice himself. The Minotaur,

Ugly, exhausted, has no gifts to bring

Except his grief. She opens utterly

To show how she can match his tears of pain.

He drinks her in, and she him, like the rain.



He sees her, then, at her most beautiful,

And he would say so, could she give him speech:

But he must end his life there, near his prize,

Having been chosen, half man and half bull,

To find the heaven that we never reach

Though seeking it forever. Nothing buys

Or keeps a revelation that was meant

For eyes not ours and once seen is soon spent:



For all our sakes she should be left alone,

Guarded by legends of how men went mad

Merely from tasting her, of monsters who

Died from her kiss. May this forbidden zone


Be drawn for all time. If she ever had


A hope to live, it lies in what we do


To curb the longing she arouses. Let


Her be. We are not ready for her yet,






Because we have a mind to make her ours,


And she belongs to nobody’s idea


Of the sublime but hers. But that we know,

Or would, if it were not among her powers

Always across the miles to bring us near

To where she thrives on shadows. By her glow

We measure darkness; by her splendor, all

That is to come, or gone beyond recall.

Love: Something Else & Mechanism

Forgive the streamy-ness of consciousness here.

Everyone says the word
but it becomes more and more apparent
that we're talking about something else
when we utter it in phrases mocked
by its over-usage elsewhere.
Talk about needed translators. This is serious.
You can bet at least 30 million people let it
go from their lips this second. At least.
Right now
someone is confessing it instead of joy
another it instead of silence
another it instead of lust
and sadly another it instead of sheer wonder.

I had a professor once who said
the problem with the English language,
and hence the whole population of persons who
organize their lives with the English language,
is that we only have one word for it,
therefore we cannot distinguish
appreciation from gut-wrenching connection,
nor biological impulse from that which is breath-taking to behold.
I’m taking this further.
When talking about its presence in relational configurations,
some are describing ownership contracts,
others conflating home, culture and comfort with power and privilege,
still others speaking to an arbitrarily constructed equation based
on the necessity of gendered halfs.

For instance, Anna and I went to this poetry workshop facilitated by
Christina about 3 years ago where we did language games of word association in order to promote the splaying forth of poetry. When Christina called out “love” I wrote down the name of my mate of the time. Anna wrote “tomatoes.”
Let me tell you: Anna’s answer stood alone
in honesty/meaning/attachment-clarity and creativity,
but I thought she was so very silly at the time.

Talk about a language problem. This is serious.
Talk about stunted relational maturity. This is so fucking serious.

So here are my people
limited in speaking what's given
limited in our capacities to build below and beyond this narrow concept
which actually might be, in its multiplicitous variations,
the most vital concept on Earth, at least near that of G-d,
while also attempting to out-source democracy. Mercy.

And so I think we're talking about something else
when we talk about love of country. Is it duty? I suspect that
after listening to the stories of soldiers and impulses
of aspiring politicians.
What is more, when we talk about loving neighbor, we are talking
specifically about responsibility. I've learned that after paying
attention to the texts that get quoted when people are asking
for charity or compassionate attention. We don't love someone
who is hungry on the street, but we love something enough
to practice responsibility in the moment we bend down to give
the leftovers in our hands. I think we love the utopian promise born
of responsibility, or the distraction acts of charity provide in
the face of debilitating suffering, or perhaps we love the people who tricked us into believing that caring for an innocent stranger
actually matters. How about those conversations about loving to witness the flourishing of all people? Perhaps you mean justice.
At least, I mean justice when I'm talking about love,
at least half the time. The other half I'm busy conflating it
with this incredible mystery I cannot describe but
keep aiming for with my poetry, theology, dancing and sex life.

Perhaps we all keep aiming for this incredible mystery
with our worn out, shallow language and
in spite of our knowledge that the aim and language will never
deliver us or set us free or give us security
there's some mechanism that won't allow us to quit trying.

What is that mechanism?

There's this YouTube Derrida video, yes I posted
it here before, that I remember now. The person behind
the camera asks the philosopher to speak on "love."
He says,"I have nothing to say about love in general,"
demanding that she pose a question.

That is the mechanism.

And the Award for Most Spacious Goes to...

I would like to write a poem
entitled "The Space in James."
When my readers were done
with the last line they'd know
I was describing G-d.

New Link to (and for) the Left

To all of you interested in peace and pastoral care, check it check it.

http://globalministries.org/mee/from-war-to-peace/the-war-and-pastoral-care.html#

Power to the peaceful,

Ejoye

My (creative) response to a ranting and raving (liberal) lunatic

From My Morning Devotional Time

From Barbra Brown Taylor's chapter "The Practice of Encountering Others" in An Altar in the World

"What we have most in common is not religion but humanity. I learned this from my religion, which also teaches me that encountering another human being is as close to God as I may ever get--in the eye-to-eye thing, the person-to-person thing--which is where God's Beloved has promised to show up. Paradoxically, the point is not to see him.The point is to see the person standing right in front of me, who has no substitute , who can never be replaced, whose heart holds things for which there is no language, whose life is an unsolved mystery. The moment I turn that person into a character in my own story, the encounter is over. I have stopped being a human being and have become a fiction writer instead."

Unemployment/Sharing/You

Today I received a phone call from a search committee informing me that my candidacy with them was through, that they'd chosen someone else and that they wished me the best. I want to reflect upon what it's like to work in a field where many people use the terminology of "call" in the discourse on jobs, employment and the future. I also want to reflect upon what it's like to hear "no thanks" when you've offered to surrender (most) of your life to serving a community. Further, I'd like to reflect on the general job market and what it means that a privileged white person with tons of education (and credentials) cannot find work right now. However, I'll leave those blogs for another day...

G-d I have so much to say right now and no one/everyone to hear me.

(Read: this is the blog of an unemployed minister)

This blogging thing can change in its author's imagination daily. Sometimes an outlet for poetry. Sometimes an experiment in reaching out. Other days I come here to distract myself. It's true. It can go from journal to community organizing portal within a matter of hours. We share it, don't we? But not in the way we share coffee in hand-crafted mugs. Not in the way we share live music, food, sex or worship.

I've been out of work since August. Perhaps the thing I miss most about working is sharing. And so I keep coming here and going to Facebook trying to share. I want to share resources, thoughts, reactions, questions. Essentially this discipline of sharing is similar to the practice of ministry. But here there's no bread and wine, no hand-holding in prayer, no facial gestures that cue my religious heart instantaneously. I miss the interdiction, the interpenetrating realities of intimacy, the internalizing of Word, the feedback loops between bodies (not screens). When I come to this blog or hit up facebook, I'm looking for You. But I don't find You here--at least not the full You. And so that's why I'm not giving up on the field of ministry though I've got every reason in the world to walk away. I find the Source of my life in the feedback loops between bodies and institutions, the Source I'm hoping to serve and rely on until I take my last breath. I cannot find, serve, nor rely upon this Source from behind this computer. It provides me distance, some security and valuable open spaces but the lack of You (here, now) forces me back to the application process, back to the employment listings, back to the search and call madness that often leaves me feeling rejected and weary. I am back to these things, because dear You, I simply cannot live without You (here, now).

Do you understand?

Smoke & Ashes instead of Dust & Ashes (because Tracy is hotter than Job)

I don't know why some music resonates deeply at various "turning points" in life, but this one sure is looping through my head and (red hot) heart right now.

Returning Home & Lasting Friendship

There are many things about "returning home" that can erk, disturb, make uncomfortable, etc. Running into people who remember you and can only relate to you as a teenager ranks high on my list of "situations I'd rather avoid." There's also the unfortunate occasion when you find yourself unconsciously regressing into that teenage space because of external stimuli: your parent's house, passing by the street where your first crush lived, etc. Some of these "returning home" experiences foster a sense of gratitude for the development and maturity achieved between "then" and now. And some of them just cause quick-think-about-something-else reactions. But for all the headache of heading home, there's one thing that stands alone as a corrective of regret and producer of thankfulness--a thing that makes you look in the present upon the past with fondness and appreciation. I just got back from having brunch with my friend ABC. We've known each other since Mrs. Brockway's 7th grade history class at El Roble. After sharing stories about what's been up for the last year (or so), we settled into our most familiar and sacred place--laughter. I cannot articulate in words how valuable her friendship is to/for me, how much my reverence for relationships that provoke laughter has grown as I've aged, and what it means to be part of something that lasts and lasts and lasts. Money can't buy everything of value my people. And only love sustains the things of true worth. I hope the seeds of relationship I plant today will become even half as fertile as the ones I planted with Adian back in 1993. (Can you tell from the picture how absolutely ridiculous we were, and therefore why we always had so many things to laugh about??)

That's my Word for today. Thanks be to G-d...Ejoye

Change & The Cancer Journals

Okay, so I know I'm posting a ton of mommy stuff, but for everything there's a season, right? Having said that: let it be known that while it's the season of momma domestically, it's the season of alchemy personally.

So many changes, I don't even know where to begin.

The loss of my 2 year love affair, which isn't really lost but still losing itself in an exciting and terrifying way? The loss of my chaplaincy position at the VA, which came as an expected continuation of a pattern already begun but turned into a brick wall before I could protest publicly? The loss of my mobility due to this back injury, which has forced me into a slower pace than I'd ever willingly choose (the slowness giving gifts I could never anticipate)? Yes, I could start there. Or I could start with the poets I've been reading: C.K. Williams, Adriene Rich (again), and Yusef Komanyaaka. Or I could start with the musicians currently on rotate: "New Beginnings" by Tracy Chapman, MGMT, and Bon Iver's "For Emma, forever ago" (thanks to Courtney Brooke--who got married, wow).


But what I really want to say is this: I purchased Audre Lorde's "Cancer Journals" after posting about it the other day. I'm halfway through her writing and cannot believe the depth of my connection to and yearning for this text. Jesus. Much like my reaction to finding Molly Bolt, I feel outraged that it's taken me 28 years to find Lorde wrestling with body pain and the maxims of healing. What if my reading of the "Cancer Journals" got as much social/political/relational reward and reinforcement as my reading of the New Testament? or To Kill a Mockingbird? Whatever, I hate to harp on the negative when my engagement with a resource is producing such novelty, beauty, and eroticism. But I just had to harp for a second. Please read this text if you haven't. The reflections on prosthesis and power brought me right back to Betcher's work in "Spirit and the Politics of Disablement" (another must read). We have got to stop the war on people's natural bodies under the invisible forces of racist/sexist/ablist/heterosexist capitalism. We have got to encourage the flourishing of the multiple, and let me just say, there's nothing more powerful than a black-dyke-breast-cancer-surviving-poet talking about her experience with a mastectomy to confirm this fact. Survival is beautiful. Testimony is beautiful. I give glory to my Creator for the witness of Audre Lorde and how it's pushing me today, into the place of appreciation for all that's lost, saved, and moved by love.

Mom's Birthday Blessing

For Your Birthday
By John O'Donohue (taken from "To Bless the Space Between Us")





Blessed be the mind that dreamed the day
the blueprint of your life
would begin to glow on earth,
illuminating all the faces and voices
that would arrive to invite
your soul to growth.

Praised be your father and mother,
who loved you before you were,
and trusted to call you here
with no idea who you would be.

Blessed be those who have loved you
into becoming who you were meant to be,
blessed be those who have crossed your life
with dark gifts of hurt and loss
that have helped to school your mind
in the art of disappointment.

When desolation surrounded you,
blessed be those who looked for you
and found you, their kind hands
urgent to open a blue window
in the gray wall formed around you.

Blessed be the gifts you never notice,
your health, eyes to behold the world,
thoughts to countenance the unknown,
memory to harvest vanished days,
your heart to feel the world's waves,
your breath to breathe the nourishment
of distance made intimate by earth.

On this echoing-day of your birth,
may you open the gift of solitude
in order to receive your soul;
enter the generosity of silence
to hear your hidden heart;
know the serenity of stillness
to be enfolded anew
by the miracle of your being.

***This is the birthday blessing I offered at my mom's 60th Birthday celebration last night.

Happy Birthday Mom Tuesday Poem

"Making a decision to have a child–it's momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body."



3 : 6 (excerpt)
Alta

one hesitates to bring a child into this world without fixing
it up a little. paint a special room. stop sexism. learn how
to love. vow to do it better than it was done when you were
a baby. vow to make, if necessary, new mistakes. vow to be
awake for the birth. to believe in joy(e) even in the midst of
unbearable pain

Pain & Creativity

Anticipating a constructed myth of apocalyptic content to emerge from this event, this event somehow external and internal simultaneously,
i hear the words of Maria "invite it in; have a relationship with it."
i hear the words of Barbra Brown Taylor "if you're willing to stay awake, this too will become an altar"
i remember that Audre Lorde wrote "Cancer Journals" when she got sick and though I've never read them, I trust her because of everything else she's written, and I trust that someone of her brilliance knew exactly what she was doing when taking up the creative task in response to the potential silencing of misery and physical pain.
i remember listening to David Sturdevant talking about nationalism, as a veteran of the Vietnam era, talking about the pain of citizenship in these times, talking about how his music saved him then and it saves him now, before playing "America the Beautiful" on his harmonica and breaking my politically pouty heart out of its dangerously protective shell.

i recall their words, their teachings, their works of suffering transformed, and I come here, to this place, this space, to write...

because today

i could only walk around my block twice
and envisioned myself looking like an old woman
trapped inside this 28 year old body
that struggles to put one foot in front of the other
when i used to kickbox and dance in nightclubs
for hours on end. i used to envision myself
a fierce warrior, an ecstatic worshipper in those places
and today an apocalyptic narrative began forming
where I envisioned myself walking slowly and painfully for the rest of my life,
stuck in this pain-killer enduced ghost-likeness forever, unable to get past
the numbing sensation that reaches into my hips and
only breaks when shooting pains erupt in my ankles, unable to get past
the numbing sensation that pervades unexpected things like
emotions, sex drive and appetite.

so i come to confess my fear
to call upon the giants of art and recovery
and inspired by their witness of power, i come
to label my injury and its 6 month subsequent reign as a producer of both:
pain and poetry,
loss and creativity
death and fertility.
i come to reclaim the parts of this event which remain
possible and productive,
allowing pain the attention its due and healing the right she deserves.

(Hey Peeps: All week long I'm celebrating my mom who is turning 60! Therefore, all poems this week will be about mothering, daughtering, love of family, the feminine and aging with grace. Here's to the womyn who gave me life and who lives so courageously. Here's hope for "new freedoms born of detachment." Here's poetry for momma. Love and respect, Ejoye)


"Gestalt at Sixty" by May Sarton

I am not ready to die,
But I am learning to trust death
As I have trusted life.
I am moving
Toward a new freedom
Born of detachment,
And a sweeter grace--
Learning to let go.

I am not ready to die,
But as I approach sixty
I turn my face toward the sea.
I shall go where tides replace time,
Where my world will open to a far horizon
Over the floating, never-still flux and change.
I shall go with the changes,
I shall look far out over golden grasses
And blue waters....

Titles by Leonard Cohen

I had the title Poet
and maybe I was one
for a while
Also the title Singer
was kindly accorded me
even though
I could barely carry a tune
For many years
I was known as a Monk
I shaved my head and wore robes
and got up very early
I hated everyone
but I acted generously
and no one found me out
My reputation
as a Ladies' Man was a joke
It caused me to laugh bitterly
through the ten thousand nights
I spent alone
From a third-storey window
above the Parc du Portugal
I've watched the snow
come down all day
As usual
there's no one here
There never is
Mercifully
the inner conversation
is cancelled
by the white noise of winter
"I am neither the mind,
The intellect,
nor the silent voice within..."
is also cancelled
and now Gentle Reader
in what name
in whose name
do you come
to idle with me
in these luxurious
and dwindling realms of Aimless Privacy?


Ejoye's commentary: I don't know why, but I've been obsessed with this poem for at least 6 months. I've probably read it over 100 times. I keep coming back to it like I used to go back to scripture thinking I hadn't quite "gotten it yet" (as if we ever "get" scripture...or poetry...or ourselves...or each other). The last 7 lines never cease to amaze or implicate.

I LOVE poetry. This is worship and gift.

The Logos Still Unfolding

Meeting Molly Bolt at Age 28

Due to the glorious fact that James gave me a large number of his books before moving to Portland, I have more critical race theory and GLBTQ resources in my library. Praise be to G-d. One of the books that he gave to me is "Rubyfruit Jungle" by Rita Mae Brown. I just finished reading it, cover to cover, in less than 24 hours. Yes, I am unemployed and have more time to read than usual. However, it's good enough for the average employed person to do some necessary task re-assigning in order to plow through the pages with ferocity. I could go into all kinds of author crediting and content acclaiming but I figure that most folks who check in with my blog have already read "Rubyfruit Jungle" and therefore already know the noise that need be known. Instead I'd like to profess how deeply sad I am that it took 28 years for this book to find my hands, eyes, mind and heart. All these years my skepticism of gender conformity and the tyranny of monogamy have been met with shaming response. I cannot imagine how different my life would be today if Molly Bolt had been the protagonist par excellance of my life instead of Juliet Capulet or Huck Finn.

as time rolls on, the way, my appreciation
incrementally increases
for the unfolding of expected things that,
though expected, still surprise me with their
novelty--an awe and wonder producing novelty.

things like
seasons, but particularly the Fall which descends
and moves by the sound of wind-pushed leaves
harmonizing with sidewalks anticipating rain.
these leaves promise to flame before being extinguished
and i love that in the way of surprise silencing expectation.

and

then there are those relationships that flame
without any signal of extinction in sight,
relationships generously laboring on behalf of survival and pleasure,
ones that flip and flop, and sometimes remain sideways for what seems
like years, but do the work of familiarity and recognition
and tender gracing without asking permission for one simple reason:
they've earned that privilege,
which isn't really a privilege, but the incessantly moving mode of salvation
woven through moments where need and availability collide.
those relationships i love too, in the way of surprise silencing expectation.

and

there are those moments when something simultaneously smaller and grander
than seasons and beloveds
takes a glimpse of itself,
and though it has glimpsed itself before in moments just like this,
the beholding right now feels all/together new and desiring,
so deeply penetrating and non-conforming,
so rich in flavor and vague in mystery
one cannot help but muster the courage to remain open to surprise,
to play the fool in this life of sequence.

Seasonal Memory

October
By Martha Tamburrano (a.k.a my momma!)

This is the season of dying,
This October
When the crop no longer lifts its head
To greet the sun,
But offers the harvest and droops,
Bending its face to the ground.

This October, this time
Of bounty, of unutterable beauty
Yet filled with loss and mourning.

This October, when you, whom we loved
Exhaled your last breath
So quietly we were not quite sure
If you were still there.

This October, like you when you left,
Moves inexplicably toward the night of winter
Cold, dark and barren
Save the Narcissus bud
Pushing its way through the earth.

Sweet Maybe James

Thirst

Sometimes I get so thirsty
that getting to water feels like the
mediating possibility between life and death.

Is that how G-d feels in those moments
when we refuse to pay attention?

Glenda

Tonight a neighbor in blue adidas shorts and a white muscle tank
jogged by while his son, wearing a light-bulbed helmet,
peddled with ferocity in order to keep pace.
Struck by the smallness of the child,
the vulnerability of space between them
and the lack of street lights, I took a deep breath
and wondered, with far reaching skepticism if I could
ever trust the world enough to get pregnant.
I thought of you, in that moment, and questioned if that’s
why you’re childless and still mothering the world
at age 75.

I will keep putting words to images until this grief lends itself to silence.

” … And the way one can find oneself strewn
so inattentively across life, across time.
Those who touch us, those whom we touch,
we hold them or we let them go
as though it were such a small matter.”

C.K. Williams

Portland Bound

An early departure,
you left this morning at 6 a.m.
Portland-bound
with a packed car,
tears from my eyes still moist on your neck.
We didn't even make love last night,
just let our bodies touch
skin to skin, a final time.
There are some zones too sacred
to enter in the face of upcoming loss.
It's now 11:00 a.m.
and though those tears dried up hours ago
the candle in my room is still lit.
If anything, you taught me how to grieve,
how true love never sits it out, not even
when it feels like hell to p(l)ay.
So I keep the wick aflame in order
to symbolize that which lingers and burns,
materializing the lessons
you so generously provided before driving away.

World Take Note

"You cannot make love to concrete
if you care about being
non-essential wrong or worn thin
if you fear ever becoming
diamonds or lard
you cannot make love to concrete
if you cannot pretend
concrete needs your loving"

from "Making Love to Concrete" by Audre Lorde

Dear Grandma:

Peace be with you. Now and everlasting.

I do not believe in the afterlife so I write this letter for the remnants of your soul still spinning and searching for freedom within the bodies of your descendants, most specifically the parts of you pumping through the veins of your daughter (my mother) and her daughter (yours truly). I write this letter because I want you to know some things. I want to affirm some things for her and for me, for you beloved womyn.

First off: we are doing the work. Please know this. We are doing the work of liberation through sitting and sifting and shifting. We have taken the struggles of gender formation, consumption, religious freedom and sexual development and made them our own. You gave us this task and in many ways we are doing this work because you could not for lack of resources, support, for the lack of possibilities womyn had during your time to carve out lives of justice and equality for themselves. I grieve the lack of possibilities you had, grieve this in bodied life. I see the eclipse of possibility playing itself in how hard we both struggle today, my mother and I, to find place and purpose in the systems of domination and death you encountered full throttle and we continue to confront (although the struggles look and feel different today). I pray for compassion in the face of our struggle. My mom is a warrior. I am a warrior. Thank you for giving life to that.

Secondly: when we get tired of the work, when it feels too exhausting, too overwhelming and too sad there is always the chance that we'll stop and give up. But we haven't. Over the years we have taken it upon ourselves to push on, to press against one another in loving ways so that your healing might unfold in the infinite web of relations we've consciously and unconsciously weaved. This means our romance lives, our food intake, our religious devotion and our bodily becoming host the work of redemption. There was so much body deprivation. When we exercise instead of remain stagnant, we are setting you free. There was so much silencing. When we refuse to stay quiet and exercise power in boardrooms, town hall meetings, our partnerships and with one another, we are unlocking your legacy. There was so much religious control. When we find rituals that fit our truth instead of blindly submitting to authorities that lie about divinity, we honor your presence among us. There was so much secrecy and discrediting of mental health. When we open in therapy and pour our guts into shared vulnerable space, often relinquishing comfort and security for the promise of wholeness, we place power together which includes you over the fear-based individualism that kept you suffocated and locked up. There was so much biblical interpretation that produced hatred of skin. When we dare to love our bodies, instead of starving them or outsourcing their pleasure to idols, when we take joy in the flesh instead of paying allegiance to texts that would shame it, we are loving you. There was so much rigidity, so much scarcity and lack. When we refuse to be sex objects or materialistic robots to the ominous forces of capitalism, we remember you and honor you. This is not easy work. We get tired and we fuck up. Please see the exhaustion and weariness, not as signs of burden, but as proof of our commitment to you. This work takes extraordinary discipline; it is our gift to you.

Third: This work is not just for us. This work is for the world: for all the people we currently see, hear, work with and love. This work is for those we've never encountered but might be impacted by the ripple effect that happens when anyone, anywhere takes it upon themselves to heal and to show up in this world alive, not dead, not dying but alive and living. And this work is for G-d, the creating, redeeming and sustaining power that holds all of us in everlasting arms, a G-d who held you and holds us no matter the mountains in need of move. This G-d will take your pain, our work and a future full of potential for Her own. She will resurrect the eclipsed possibilities of your life and make a way in our lives, in the lives of those to come and we will be saved. Most importantly, this saving work will continue. There was no official beginning to the struggle; I'm sure your suffering came from a bloodline beyond your recollection. There will be no end to this saving work because grace is real and we are willing. You can rest, now, in peace because we know that grace is real and we are willing to live.

Keeping Quiet by Pablo Neruda

Now we will count to twelve

and we will all keep still.



This one time upon the earth,

let's not speak any language,

let's stop for one second,

and not move our arms so much.



It would be a delicious moment,

without hurry, without locomotives,

all of us would be together

in a sudden uneasiness.



The fishermen in the cold sea

would do no harm to the whales

and the peasant gathering salt

would look at his torn hands.



Those who prepare green wars,

wars of gas, wars of fire,

victories without survivors,

would put on clean clothing

and would walk alongside their brothers

in the shade, without doing a thing.



What I want shouldn't be confused

with final inactivity:

life alone is what matters,

I want nothing to do with death.



If we weren't unanimous

about keeping our lives so much in motion,



if we could do nothing for once,

perhaps a great silence would

interrupt this sadness,

this never understanding ourselves

and threatening ourselves with death,

perhaps the earth is teaching us

when everything seems to be dead

and then everything is alive.



Now I will count to twelve

and you keep quiet and I'll go.



-from Full Woman, Fleshly Apple, Hot Moon

Translated by Stephen Mitchell

Public Acts of Lament and the Covering Up of Suicides

Press

"With a third Palo Alto student apparently committing suicide on the Caltrain tracks in just four months, railroad officials, educators and mental health professionals described the deaths Monday as an extremely rare "cluster." Concerned that other troubled teens would continue to be drawn to the site, transit officials said they were enforcing their policy on removing memorials, worried that the public grieving could inadvertently glorify the deaths and inspire more attempts. In contrast to the flowers and notes that crowded East Meadow Drive after the previous deaths, the only visible sign Monday of the latest tragedy was a police officer on patrol."

Poem

Cluster

fuck.

Sick inside.

Outside: Stanford, white successful people and houses that sell for (cheap at) 1.5 million dollars. No one says hello in my neighborhood, but they eat organic food and drive hybrid cars--hallelujah.

Translation of the Transit Official Memo

"Please don't grieve, beings who value life, because other teens struggling with life might see you valuing life lost and think that's the best way to feel valued. They might see your vigils, your sorrow and flowers, signs of living love and mistake them for a reason to step in front of a train. Instead we think they should see a single police officer patrolling the streets which will inevitably make them feel "protected." Cover up your deaths. Cover up the costs of your emotional repression and deadening individualism that causes the death of adolescents."

Pastoral response

Last time I checked stifling grief is one of the most effective ways to prolong misery and perpetuate violence. Since when do public officials get to dictate our rituals for the dead? Get out their and weep. For those we have lost. For what remains scooping up in the dust. Put flowers on the ground. Hold signs and candles. And if they arrest you, scream out for the sake of all our souls.

Tears From (the mystic portion of) Heaven

What kind of body brings a throb to your pubic bone, aimless lover?

What form of God do you worship, wandering pilgrim?

Where do your people come from, servant of the Earth?

We'd like
names
dates
nation states
genders
and other fictitious handle bars
in order
to grasp you


Somewhere while sipping sweet wine
smoking fat cigars
and swimming naked in structureless desire
Cusa, Rumi & Derrida
cry over our lack of comprehension and imagination

Confession Litany

(On "safety protocol" that closed the sweat lodges at the Native American Cultural Center where I work, the Sotomayor hearings, PANA's closure, health care town halls, and more of my friends being hurt by their "Christian" family members...)

I am sorry that narrow interpretations of Jesus' life and ministry lead my people to sacrifice sacrifice, that instead of seeing Jesus' work as an example to be followed of self-emptying on behalf of the community, some Christians consider Jesus' death a once-and-for-all event that abnegates our neighborly responsibilities. For the ways poor communities, communities of color, the elderly and youth are being sacrificed on the altars of financial melt-down: forgive us. For the ways already-marginalized individuals are being 'put on the spot' or 'pitted against each other' while structures of privilege and domination wash their hands of culpability: forgive us. For those of us who can afford, literally, to stop having conversations about justice and therefore stop listening: forgive us. For not participating in the struggles for social and economic equality because we consider ourselves 'separate' from the suffering of "others": forgive us. For the ways some Christians in the U.S. are currently blocking the advancement of health and health care by promoting fear-mongering and scape-goating: forgive us.

I am sorry that the idolatry of power-over masculinity and historic, contemporary, individual and institutional closeting of same-sex eroticism has produced a religion full of hyper-vigilant homophobia and virulent womyn-hating, that the externalized rhetoric of hate (masking internal undealt with realities of desire) has caused divisions between society, families, individuals and churches.. For the ways bodies are marginalized, condemned, denied and objectified: forgive us. For the way limiting roles get constructed and how those roles stifle personal and relational eros: forgive us. For the way oppressive social structures like slave-model marriage and the silencing of children get employed in order to downplay the vulnerabilities of authentic relationship: forgive us. For the ways true love, relational creativity and sexual freedom get blocked and shamed in the name of "God," for the ways our bible gets used as a weapon, our churches used for exclusion, our leaders used for upkeep of the status quo: forgive us.

May the hurt we've caused be the face of G-d beckoning us out of our dead places. Amen.

Treasured Earthen Vessels

I'm celebrating my graduation from CPE by putting this artwork by Meinrad Craighead into the world through my blog. This image somehow captures how I'm feeling about being "done." Glory!

I get down with this. Hope you do too!

Never Over

Transferring
from your shelves to my shelves
from your drawers to my drawers
from your walls to my walls
from your kitchen to my kitchen
from your bedside to my bedside
from your closet to my closet:
books, candles, collages, cups, nipple clamps, hoodies,
traces, negotiations, scented scenes, altars.

Left wondering from your
space to mine
what material could possibly transfer itself
in all the ways we have,
what objects could possibly shift
inside and out,
flip sideways and surrender
as our bodies have
day in and day out
over years, months, days and seconds.

As I pack up, load in, and drive away
only to unpack somewhere else
you haunt me--all/ready--and I know there's
no movement
yours or mine
near or far
now or later
capable of boxing and sending this love away.

Regarding Symbolic Enactment

If you want to know the difference
between the religious heart
and the 'right' mind
think candle in the window
versus
flag in the front yard.

The Struggle for Individuation amidst Suffocating Cultural Homogeneity

All night long:
dreams of unfolded clothes
multiplying, minute to minute,
in the middle of my bed.
In order to protect my rest place,
I had to separate the clothing out,
evaluating the utility and worth of each piece,
article by article,
questioning what would be saved
and what would be carried away.
Eventually I realized
"so much material, so little value"
and I began throwing them overboard
with rapid intensity and rage
screaming "where did you all come from?!"

Wind

Theologians adopt images of G-d like construction workers utilize tools. We build houses, for ourselves, for one another. We do this because we are creative and pragmatic, expressive and yearning AND we do this because wordlessness (which is the only honest utterance of G-d) is not an option when you need a front door to enter. Right now the only image of G-d working for me is wind. Because all I have is movement and being blown about. That's divine, right?

The Politics of Recognition

No—not in the sense of identity and access,
but the instantaneous home making
that occurs on the street
(or any other random assembly place)
when wide open, yet slightly guarded gestures
without any pre-established vocabulary
spur the one glance…two glance…now not looking away way of gazing.
In it: recognition and
space to explore that which is co/incidentally familiar
and wholly other,
where in hearing t/his story,
the mortar (a.k.a “my” body) of past time pain seems translatable
and the potential of passion futuristically redeemed.

Deeply personal, and not, this politic.
A relationship.
A refuge--
one that welcomes in
and pushes back out
any wilderness fearing/seeking wanderer.

eternal funeral

yesterday
"love has no restrictions"
today
"make it my own and it cannot harm me"

i walk, exhausted, through the cemetery
in my neighborhood, canonizing his utterance,
heeding his hope, re-calling his love while
searching the honor rituals of the living,
how they keep loving their dead,
knowing my ritual concretizes
a sentiment in line with his suggestions.

these corporeal remains,
deeply buried, mostly unknown and untended,
resourcefully transformed over time
signify my greatest fear: forgetfulness.
these seasonal flowers, small waving flags,
sacred marble inscriptions
and angel figurines over-looking it all
signify my greatest hope: that in the act of remembering
something goes from grey to green,
that in making the death my own,
our loss will no longer
harm me.

Future Passage

Years from now
someone will be reading
"The History of the 21st century of America"
and they will underline this passage:
during a time of relentless wars
and widespread poverty which included
inadequate health care, home foreclosures,
and job losses of unparalleled proportion,
America elected its first woman Speaker of the House,
its first African American President
and its first Latina Justice of the Supreme Court.
On the margin of that text
the reader will scribble something like this:
why must we horrify ourselves
into doing the right thing/s
over and over
again?

Quantum Entanglement

A skeptical scientist says
"corollary, not causal"
to describe the phenomenon
of lovers' prayers impacting health
on a molecular level despite miles
and miles between them.

This brilliant and necessary man,
with his lab coat and
theories of mechanics
which will probably save the world,
this man of hypothesis and proof
does not know my G-d.
And clearly does not know my lovers.

Dr. Singh Diagnosing Hypocrisy

I've been spending most of my last two days at the Marriott Oakland City Center where the Mental Health and Spirituality Initiative hosted a conference on the intersection of Mental Health and Spirituality in crises, intervention and recovery for consumers, families of consumers and service providers. Apparently the committee members are traveling to southern California to host round two of the conference in Los Angeles later this week. Glad to see my state getting its act together on this front. Overall I'd give the conference a B+: the space and food couldn't have been better but some of the sharing bordered on repetitive, too personal and overly drawn out. I also found the apparent mistrust between those investigating "researched based practices" and those promoting "organic/authentic spiritual practices" to be unhelpful and ultimately not in the interest of building bio-psycho-social-spiritual models of care.

The committee put together a packed schedule of key note speakers and break-out sessions. Yesterday (Monday June 1st) LeAnn and I were lucky to witness a plenary session that consisted of an Interfaith Panel reflecting on mental health and spirituality from various religious traditions. I was particularly impressed by Rabbi Elliot Kukla who works at the Bay Area Jewish Healing Center in San Francisco and Dr. Meji Singh, a practicing Sikh and Chief Psychologist at the Portia Bell Hume Behavioral Health and Training Center in Concord. Dr. Singh spoke last of the 7 panelists but he got my attention when he read certain definitions of "mental disorders" from the DSM-IV and asked us to evaluate the behavior of our government according to those criterion. Seriously, check this definition for Antisocial Personality Disorder out and tell me this couldn't/wouldn't apply to U.S. socio/political behavior at home and abroad.

...

Diagnostic criteria for 301.7 Antisocial Personality Disorder
A. There is a pervasive pattern of disregard for and violation of the rights of others occurring since age 15 years, as indicated by three (or more) of the following:

(1) failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviors as indicated by repeatedly performing acts that are grounds for arrest
(2) deceitfulness, as indicated by repeated lying, use of aliases, or conning others for personal profit or pleasure
(3) impulsivity or failure to plan ahead
(4) irritability and aggressiveness, as indicated by repeated physical fights or assaults
(5) reckless disregard for safety of self or others
(6) consistent irresponsibility, as indicated by repeated failure to sustain consistent work behavior or honor financial obligations
(7) lack of remorse, as indicated by being indifferent to or rationalizing having hurt, mistreated, or stolen from another

B. The individual is at least age 18 years.
C. There is evidence of Conduct Disorder with onset before age 15 years.
D. The occurrence of antisocial behavior is not exclusively during the course of Schizophrenia or a Manic Episode.

...

So, Dr. Singh, gets me thinking, again, about the exegetical and hermeneutical exercises at the heart of diagnosis and how such diagnoses reveal the hypocrisy of U.S. political philosophy. Why is it that when some people exhibit the behaviors/symptoms listed above we will observe, perceive, interpret and label them "crazy" (and thereby allow the "system" to lock them up or do worse things to them) but when other people with power and prestige exhibit similar behaviors/symptoms on a much larger scale (which result in dead bodies, lost jobs and fiscal debt of magnanimous proportions) we call it "heroic," and even vote them into office?? Talk about cognitive dissonance. The Bush Administration gives the CIA freedom to torture and murder civilians of foreign countries (against the Geneva Convention) and Obama refuses to a) investigate and/or b) press charges but someone can go to jail for years for getting caught selling weed multiple times? Now that's symptomatology of ass-backwardness if you ask me.

Christology

I find it strange that I haven't posted anything on the blog lately given how much of my life has been spent writing. So here's a (small) portion of my Ordination Paper. These are my reflections on Jesus. Your thoughts??

I’ve heard that at some point in the ordination examination process I’ll be asked whether or not Jesus is my Lord and Savior. I’d like to answer that now so we can discuss other things later. While this question can often inspire the greatest internal revolt possible within my gut when asked by strangers, I must confess it’s a good question to address in this space. The question of Jesus’ lordship is foremost a question of power. Power is always constructed, in context, in relation and what is considered power/full changes over and through time. Hence, any honest discussion of power will include information about particular social relations formed by ideology, culture, and history. “Lord” became a signifier of and title for Roman emperors as Pax Romana extended its power geographically and politically up to and after the 1st century CE. These lords were objects of the “emperor cult:” they were worshipped and venerated as saviors who would heal, transform and restore the conditions of the people worshipping them. The basic notion informing this veneration is that political power is supreme power, the most efficacious power, the power upon which lives could be changed/saved. This notion of lordship rests on the assumption that any power at all is power over something else. The logic of this lordship sets up paradigms of sovereignty and dependency and perhaps what’s most destructive is that it requires people to surrender their own power with one another to maintain a top down system of ‘salvation.’ This kind of power was responsible for Jesus’ death. However… Jesus flipped this power script completely. He so radically over-turned imperial power that people began using the title “Lord” in reference to him. This wasn’t just a syntax transfer; it was a taking back of language, a signifying practice of dissent and resistance. By calling Jesus “Lord,” his people were deconstructing the prevailing political power of empire and proposing a new and better form of power. They were, in essence, saying no to top-down, power-over strategies of control and yes to the power of mutual relation. Jesus’ power came in the form of solidarity and “self-emptying.” He flexed his power by inviting his friends to journey with him, by feeding people, teaching compassion and forgiveness, healing hemorrhaging/out-cast women and smelly/dead men. He told silly stories and liked to party at a table full of rebels and radicals. He found his power in making old scriptures relevant to new circumstances. He found his power in long periods of prayer and meditation in nature. His ministry was one of power because it was not a solo enterprise: Jesus was able to accomplish the aims of agape because of his disciples’ willingness to engage with him in acts of gracious hospitality, acts of challenge, acts of reverent worship. His was a power with, a power of relationship, a power of love and it was in “diametrical opposition to the power of the emperor.” I revere and worship the embodiment of power made known in Jesus of Nazareth. Certainly any saving power I’ve known in my own life has taken the form of service, relationship and love. Would I call Jesus my Lord? Yes: if it meant saying no to military power, patriarchal power, white power, or economic power as the driver of my life. I must say though, the imperial connotations of the word “Lord” make it difficult for me to pronounce in any casual way, especially given my country of origin and its current strategies of foreign policy. “Savior” is a bit easier (though not effortless), especially as I understand it related to sin. Jesus saves me from “a life of aimlessness” by providing me with spiritual clues to the great ontological question how shall I live? There’s a different question I like much better than the “lord and savior” question, a question that’s more important to me. It’s what John Caputo calls the “question of the unhinged” and it descends from St. Augustine: What do I love when I love my God?

Chaos & New Things

"There's a very interesting scientific insight which says that regions where real novelty occurs, where really new things happen that you haven't seen before, are always regions which are at the edge of chaos. They are regions where cloudiness and clearness, order and disorder, interlace each other. If you're too much on the orderly side of that borderline, everything is so rigid that nothing really new happens. You just get rearrangements. If you're too far on the haphazard side, nothing persists, everything just falls apart. It's these ambiguous areas, where order and disorder interlace, where really new things happen, where the action is, if you like. And I think that reflects itself both in the development of life and in many, many human decisions." --John Polkinghorne

Happy Mother's Day Martha Lynn!

Pain, Healing and the Spiritual Nature of Exercise & Avoidance

I'm still "In Pain's Classroom" and I've learned more about healing through the physical therapy process. I want to share some of these lessons and connect it to the courageous work the vets are doing in Menlo Park.

When I first injured my back, I wanted to avoid all pain because the intensity of the initial injury hurt so ridiculously bad. Any position that caused the slightest shock to my spine or discomfort in the lower back region was to be avoided all together. I couldn't take any more physical suffering; I'd hit my limit. I had been hurt enough and by God, there would be no more of that. For the next month or so I ritualized my life attached to the goal of pain avoidance. I made a discipline of stillness and holding my breath. I mentally recorded every possible and impossible posture and made decisions about where I could go and what I could do in accordance.

And then avoidance stopped working.

The positions that saved me from the primordial pain gave way to new aches and disfigurations. The muscles overcompensating began to cramp and swell. I was tired all the time from holding myself in unnatural positions. I couldn't stop taking the muscle relaxers because something hurt all the time. The muscle relaxers made me tired. The tiredness annoyed me. Vicious, stupid cycle. (I'm going somewhere spiritual with this...stay with me)

So I went to physical therapy. I opened to the idea that someone might have a better way and plan for my healing. This gentle, beautiful soul retrieved me from the waiting room. His degrees from Santa Clara University hung on the wall next to pictures of his baseball playing sons ages 4 and 7. He stood at 5'2, 2 inches shorter than me; he was quiet and methodical, asking questions about how it all happened, what hurts now, what I wanted to gain from PT, etc. He had me lay down on the table. He showed me a 20 minute regimen of stretching and strengthening techniques. "Do it everyday" he said with soft assertion. "Okay" i said, and then added "anything to relieve the pain." I left his office and noticed, when walking to my car, that my back hurt worse after doing that 20 minute practice session than it did when I walked into Kaiser. Damn. But the next day I felt worlds better.

Did I say "anything to relieve the pain"?

For the last 3 weeks I've been trying to stick to the routine. Truth be told: I can't stand holding those poses or the immediate physical sensations that follow. It hurts like hell. Some days I flat refuse to do them. Here's the kicker: the day after the day I chose not to do my PT, I pay a big price for my negligence. If I refuse to do my strengthening and stretching not only do I lose healing momentum but my primordial injury pain rears its ugly head.

Now begins the sermon...

I work at the National Center for PTSD. Every week I hear stories of primordial injuries and the aftermath. When people first experience a traumatic event life changes its ritual structure. Whatever ritual structure folks pick up, whether its pain avoidance, controlled pain exposure, or something else, there's a way in which the event drastically alters perception/behavior/relations/etc. Some people develop PTS, some don't. Those who do often find that what enabled them to move in the wake of trauma stops working. For instance many folks drink in order to decrease PTS symptoms but eventually self-medication turns into alcohol-dependence regardless of symptomology. Vexing and perplexing cycles. It's hard, once you've been injured or experienced trauma, to admit that your own coping mechanisms have turned against you. In fact, every time we get a new patient I'm astounded by the courage it takes for them to admit they need help. In essence, they are admitting someone else might have a better way and plan for their healing.

And it hurts worse before it gets better. In order to heal (which is a life long process) one has to drop coping mechanisms that have held life together and pick up new behaviors/actions heretofore unexplored. Risk. It takes risk. And it takes daily practice. Name your feelings instead of repressing them. Communication and socialization instead of isolation. Pray and meditate instead of engaging adrenalin-enhancing behaviors. "Do it everyday" we say with soft assertion. Those who do find reward. Those who don't usually feel relief in the moment and find drastic consequences in the near future.

Before this 3rd unit of CPE I knew little about the spiritual nature of avoidance. Avoidance of the good, even when it feels comfortable, leaves one wide open to the prolonging of pain. Exercising the good, even when it hurts a little, invests in a future of healing. Do it everyday and perhaps more importantly, make sure you have friends that praise your persistence.