Passing

No statistic exists to confirm my point,

however I am virtually certain almost everyone

imagines a threshold, courtroom or pearly gate

where at the end of life all things are examined for their credibility,

morality and/or absurdity before a passing happens.

You pass if honesty,

good association,

adequate contemplation (and the like)

colored your big and smalls,

moments and decades,

stillnesses and sounds.

Your loving me

appears the only thing

that would get me a pass during

this small moment of stillness.

Peep the Brilliance

A+

Generations of the Circle

Tai Chi Chuan is the only thing I cannot describe.
So I won't try.
But I can say this:
I am grateful to my teacher and her teacher and his teacher
and years and years and years
of students being students.

Rich

Luke 12:13-21

13 Someone in the crowd said to him, ‘Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.’ ¹⁴But he said to him, ‘Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?’ ¹⁵And he said to them, ‘Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.’ ¹⁶Then he told them a parable: ‘The land of a rich man produced abundantly. ¹⁷And he thought to himself, “What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?” ¹⁸Then he said, “I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. ¹⁹And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.” ²⁰But God said to him, “You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?” ²¹So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich towards God.’

Exodus

A girl found herself lost, alone, and confused in the woods. After hours of walking in this unexplored, undesired territory, the girl reached a river. She walked up to it, saw her reflection and began to cry. Her tears hit the surface of the water and awakened a figure therein.

"Why are you crying?" the reflection asked.

The girl thought she was crazy. Certainly it was her own voice she was hearing; had she been alone so long that her own thoughts began to take on an outsider's voice? She poked through the water, penetrating her reflection.

"What are you doing?" the reflection asked.
"What the fuck?" The girl turned around, looked up to the sky, pushed the surface of the water again. This could not be happening.
"What are you trying to touch?" the reflection asked.
"Are you talking to me? or am I crazy?" The girl looked deep and hard into the water as she questioned the reflection. Sure enough their mouths were moving in sync.
"You're not crazy. What do you want from me? I am here after all. Isn't that what you wanted: someone here for you?"
"I want to get out of these woods" the girl responded hopelessly.
"Build yourself a fort out of things you find in the woods--for shelter."

The girl gathered big branches and large leaves from the floor of the woods. She thought she'd go talk to the reflection again, but by the time she was done gathering, the daylight was minimal; hence she would wait until tomorrow to return.

Sleeping was difficult. She could not get comfortable. Every time she remembered the conversation with her reflection a sneaking suspicion of insanity would creep in. Eventually she got tired of her own thoughts and fell asleep. In the morning she went back to the water.

After looking at her reflection with morning eyes--tired morning eyes--the girl said "Okay, now tell me how to get out of here please." She felt bad about being overly demanding, but couldn't muster a semblance of courtesy. Besides, who would she be offending? herself? a figment of her imagination?
"What are you talking about?" The reflection looked perplexed in a condescending way.
"You helped me yesterday; so help me now." She was rather turned off by his lack of knowledge and display of superiority.
"I don't know what you're talking about. Are you nuts?" The reflection looked away.

...are my own eyes turning away from me? she wondered.
...what could he possibly be looking at? i'm right here.

She took a huge rock and dropped it on the face of her reflection. Then she collected small stones and hurled them into the middle of the river. She threw them hard, over and over, until her arm felt like it might rip out of the socket. When the pain of her arm took over the girl screamed long and hard. The scream echoed five times. The final echoe felt like a sacred return--like the fury she released into the air came back to her out of loyalty. She returned to the place where her conversations with the reflection took place. There her face remained staring back at her, as if unaffected by the displays of rage. After a lengthy period of sustained and unobstructed staring the reflection lifted his palm in display.

The girl turned away and ran. She ran like she was being chased. She ran like someone was hanging on to their last breath just waiting for her to arrive. She ran like her body had trained for this moment for years. She made her way to a road. Her toes hit pavement. She was out.

To Wade

When you show up
with your little heart all pouty and tangled
I forgive myself for all the times my heart
is all pouty and tangled.

Sunday Morning Cleaning

Two nights ago

underneath the filth of hotel sheets and comforter

i craved something unobtainable at the time.

Though I consider myself a master interpreter of desire,

this particular evening the content(s) of my longing escaped me.

Here’s what I did know:

the thing,

located at home had

a grip of sorts on my circadian rhythms,

a knowing of what needed replenishing,

a soothing potential, for nights like these,

an access to things closer to the other bedside

(like the ashtray or t.v. remote)

a freer access to things inside me than anyone else

a future with my face, appearing and reappearing

a sarcasm that doesn’t mind chancing offense for the sake of laughs

a pulse and breath that steal my own when absent.

This afternoon

while scrubbing the bathroom floor

I realized what it was I desired two nights ago.

Not you there, but you here—today—cleaning the kitchen

after a night of gripping, knowing, soothing, accessing,

appearing and reappearing, offending and laughing,

pulsing and breathing.

I missed what we have slipped into: each other.

An Open Letter to the "Non-Believers" Who Aren't Really Non-Believers (in-case you didn't catch that with the quotation marks).

Dear Athiests:

You have no idea, or perhaps thousands of ideas, like me, about that thing we disagree on.
Or do we disagree with each other or within or about or because of it?
I often admire your faith, a faith rather silly and easy at times and other times drastically complex and profound. As consumed as we are in the same question with divergent answers, our processes of thought mirror one another. While the middle ground folks, namely moderate agnostics, claim their neutrality, we carry the books and banners of belief. Funny though, you assert what G*d is and choose not to believe, while we assert what G*d is not and choose to believe. Yours is the more rational choice of course: to create G*d in the image of all you know and to know it's bullshit (read: not worship worthy). I wish I was more capable, as you are, of knowing when I'm standing in mystery and when I'm standing in idolatry of the imagination. Unfortunately the difference is not always clear to me and further, I am not sure my brain is all there is (which is also the beef I have with religious fundamentalists who claim to know what G*d is by placing all faith in their ability to fully grasp mediated revelation).
What I have learned in the last two years is that some people need the idea of G*d just to survive. Though you softly critique this survival mechanism as 'weak' or 'crutch-like,' I beg to differ. A distinction must be drawn somewhere between religious belief as that which helps us keep keepin on and that which stifles our ability to engage critically with the realities of our lives in community on this planet. Simple stupid answers to serious suffering, phrases like "god has a plan" or "he never gives you something you cannot handle" are bad theology. In these cases we have the very god you reference and astutely cast out of consideration. I join the iconoclastic activity you take up in the face of this theological insufficiency. However, when someone (or some group) is facing horrific life circumstances and finds an outlet for their pain in prayer, song and communal ritual whereby they feel the strength necessary to keep breathing, iconoclastic activity strikes me inhumane and cruel. Further, don't we all have our 'thing' we need just to get by? Many of you critiquing the G*d of religion are quite content bowing down to the survival potential in substances of the temporary mind-numbing nature. So let's be honest: it's not so much who we make G*d out to be, or who G*d really is, but what we do (or don't do) to and with others with/out of these beliefs systems. If you want to be an athiest, fine by me. Just follow in the footsteps of Wade Meyer if that's the case because he's got it right.

Feel me?
Ejoye

In the Adult Sand Box: Who's Pushing Us Now?

Just across the fire place and
generational divide sits a
white haired Indy 500 watching immigrant Italian
flanked by his chicken preparing wife whose
dressed in black and white linen, in the kitchen.

Today, after reading (rather poor) exegesis
on the book of Jonah by a Mennonite pastor
from Canada, I decided to go buy my own Bible
but I couldn’t find anything pocket size or
outside of the KJV genre (which Wade likes these days, but
I’m still suspect).

Last night, just across the country and
telephone line my soul mother
Maria reached her magic-wand fingers
into my desperately needy ears
and cleared the cobwebs of overly-cautious
pre-cancellation ideas away by saying
“swinging from deep disgust to complete
desire for union is what intimacy is.”

I peel potatoes for the black and white linen wearing
womyn in the kitchen after exiting the couch where
the recently purchased medium sized NIV sits turned to
the book of Jonah which took me by surprise
not by the whale
nor the unanticipated repentance and pardon of Nineveh,
but the untouched vine.
“It sprang up overnight and died overnight” saith the Lord.

Remember back in the sandbox
when those first few pushes between the shoulders
quickly propelled us to the highest of heights, both backwards and forwards?
Remember when those highest of heights, both backwards and forwards
were the moments we lived for, not the moments we froze in?
Our prayer then: please don’t let it stop.
Our prayer now: please make it stop.

Mario Andretti flips his car in the rain.
Lincoln calls from Dodger Stadium; they’re down 0-1 in the 8th.
The chicken in the kitchen smells soul-full.
These things sprang up overnight and will die overnight.
Such a swing set is this: this is what intimacy is.

Facks

This is the busiest time of my life.
I love lincoln.
Safehouse womyn keep me alive and kickin.
Getting and staying sober was and is the hardest and most rewarding thing I've done.
Degrees of separation are an illusion.
Candle light heals.
Tears are miracles on cheeks.