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.
2 comments:
u know, i can say the same to u, woman! what a life ur leading! sorry to hear about all the recent "losses" but i think it sounds like u have already figured out some of the blessed aspect of them, so for that i am grateful. i hate that tai amri left without introducing us, but then again, i hate that he left at all...
xo:m
Me too Michelle, me too. I think about him all the time and know he chose wisely. But it still hurts that he's gone. I didn't spend enough time with him while he was in the East Bay. I kick myself for that AND consider it "a call to action" for when he and i occupy the same zip code in the future. For some reason I have no doubt the we'll live in the same place again. I hope you're there too. I'm going to meet you when you're in your element one day. So let me know when you're reading or teaching and I'll come...
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