Calvary (2014...by John Michael McDonagh, Father James played by Brendan Gleeson)

...Lush Irish countryside along the beach.  A “good” priest has been given the warning through the confessional that he has one week to live before the unseen perpetrator will put him down because he is a “good” priest.  This unseen man believes this will bring into balance the wrong done to him as a child when he was raped by a priest who was not punished for it.
Flannery O’Connor at the end of “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” says through the antagonist, “‘She would have been a good woman if there’d been somebody there to shoot her every day of her life.’” While this is specifically said of the protagonist, a grandmother quite ignorant of her influence and impact on the people around her, I believe O’Connor is making an obvious statement about human nature.  The truth extends to Father James as he lives out a week balancing his duties and convictions as a priest with his responsibilities as a father and his faith as a man, a learned, astute, wise, discerning man.  He was a good man before the proverbial gun was put to his head.  Everyone in town suddenly becomes suspect—and while he intimates to the Bishop that he might know who it is—the rest of us are left wondering, listening to the voices carefully to see if we hear the tone and timber of that original confession in the opening scene.  All the men in that town are troubled.  All the men of earth are troubled.  Yet the perspective is shifted ever so slightly through the filter of this eminent threat.
The film is billed as a dark comedy.  The traces of humor in the script and play on words and language and relationships that led someone to deem it that are indeed dark but as a film, I disagree that it’s a dark comedy.  There is dark humor there, satiric jabs; and poisonous sarcasm grows as Father James approaches the Sunday deadline.  And just as that word carries a double entendre, language and images throughout the film carry the weight of double entendre, searing and sneering jokes and reparte failing to mask toxic wounds of the soul.
It is a social commentary, a cautionary tale, a character study (of many characters).  It is insightful, revelational, simple and complex.  You will see yourself in every character.  You will long to have Father James as your confessor.  You will long to stand between him and Calvary.  But that would be to violate what God has set in motion—the grace, the deeply personal (violating) grace and calling for the one to let his faith emboldens him to walk directly into the blinding light of God’s unspeakable, inexplicable ultimate plan.
Do not read on until you have seen the film, then read as an invitation to discussion.
Calvary is of course the place where Jesus was crucified.  The meaning of the word is literally, “place of the skull.”  Connotations ring out as referencing the dark irony that we would put to death the very One who would be our way of salvation, one who would be most honest, most loving and forgiving.  It is through the death of the One that we are saved.  Does that make Father James a messiah figure?  In as much as anyone who answers the call of Christ to follow and model choices after the teachings of Christ, yes.  Jesus walked into his eminent death with similar phases of hope and prayer.  As a story archetype, I believe James is a messiah figure.  Any Christian seeing this film may be the most disturbed by this emotional climactic scene of the story (or not).  Where James separates from Jesus in innocence is in admitting that whereas he cried at the slaying of his beloved dog Bruno, he confessed he did not cry when, personally detached, he read the news that came by way of the paper about so many children who suffered at the hands of pedophiles who masqueraded as priests.  His honesty, his confession pulled the first trigger.
Parallels, cycles, connections are made at every turn in this film—the most profound perhaps being the one in the final scene.
Stories give us the opportunity to live vicariously, to search our hearts and minds and to connect with people and ways beyond our own, which also, conversely and miraculously are in reality our own.  The power of life and language lies precisely in our need to connect in empathy—to love as to be loved—to understand as to be understood—to forgive as to be forgiven—to live as to die.

Not one message lost that day (flash fiction)

Morning drags herself in for night crew waiting those last hours, minutes, before shift changes and shut eye comes before the ache subsides.  Radio room below deck of an aircraft carrier smells just like you’d think in an airlocked compartment where barely ten guys could stand and turn, elbowing on all sides.  It was close quarters.  Air piped in mixed with that machine smell of electrical boxes stacked floor to ceiling all with nobs and gauges that pulled thinly threaded sound into the ears via doughnut earphones.  Static at least let you know the box was still hot.  There were two of us fresh on duty that morning and we could hear the bombs in the distance even in that underwater tomb.  Too far away to hear the warning signals.  The next sound shook us, I looked up through the top and saw planes, meatballs on the wings.  I shouted down, “Japanese!” Jumped to, adjusted the nobs, both of us trying to determine what was going on.  Radio buzzing up with questions. Cautiously we said it looked like an attack—hadn’t heard from headquarters so we say nothing much.  We knew the truth in each other’s eyes.  Pearl Harbor was under attack.  The Japanese were attacking Pearl Harbor. Then we received and relayed orders to dispatch planes.  We knew lives were flaming out with every sound and tremor.  Pen and paper at my elbow.  Suddenly my crew, my friends, my own life became most precious.  No thoughts, only words.  As pilots headed in they could see the mass destruction forming clouds with sparks flying, like crazed palm trees capping out with swirls of smoke and ships exploding in the seas.  The pilots knew where they were headed and radioed in the letters. Voices like ghosts trapped in the wind screaming over screaming engines, each word fired into my memory, shot out of my pen, my lips trembling with their fear and bravery. “Tell Mom I’m thinking of her and I’m sorry I won’t be home at Christmas after all.”  “Sally Fulbright, 157 4th Street, Tupelo: Honey, I love you—every hour was hoping to see you again.  Okay?”  “This one’s for you, Jimmy! Take care of Mommy for me.” “Mail the letter under my pillow. Got it?” “Mom, I remember the train engine you got me for Christmas—I was only 7 but I knew it cost you more than money.”

between death and resurrection october 4

100414  Emotional bombs keep exploding at the sight of things I’d forgotten.  Why do I weep?  Does it matter? I weep.   Dad, dead now only five months.  Like yesterday and forever alive but I can’t reach him or talk to him or roll my eyes when he hangs up the phone without saying goodbye.  Except for that one time just before we had to move him to hospice, I got home from a visit, they live three hours away, and I called him to say I’d arrived home safely and we chatted about how wonderful the weekend was (as we always do) and then in childlike fun we exchanged all kinds of goodbyes—his voice, my dad’s of all my life so familiar so right so him, but in light-heartedness so rare for a man so serious—we played with, exchanged, all the different words for bubye...see you later alligator, tata for now, ciao, ciao bella, so long, see you next time, it’s been real, sianara, toodloo, adios amigos, bubye...and it went on for awhile and I was giggling and he chuckling, so great to hear joy in his voice, and mama was in the background saying, “Jerry!  Hang up the phone now!”  Dad and I were gloriously stuck in some delightful spin of timeless, spaceless connection that of course now is weighted down with all the grief of time violently chiseling away at such precious moments of being and connection, forever here separated by a violent, traumatic death that quickly followed that call.  It keeps roaring back at me like the relentless ocean waves storming onto the beaches of my memory and I can’t swim there any more.

Now Mama stands in her new, smaller, more cost efficient “garden apartment” sorting through for the third time in as many months, what she treasures.  This last time she sorted without me and so I picked up boxes labeled “for Kim or for garage sale” (my friend and I and others are having a garage sale next month).  This morning, back at my house, I opened one box she’d filled and in it, carefully wrapped, are the blue delft plates she so dearly loves from Holland they bought when they traveled there, permanent fixtures in every kitchen since, emblems of my youth and the certainty of a loving, mostly stable family and there they are in a box labeled “for Kim or for garage sale” and the whole world again crashes down on my heart and soul and it’s like the earth opens and swallows me into the shards of no longer being. And I hear echoing mama’s voice last weekend as she stands in her new, smaller, more efficient “garden apartment” say, “I just don’t really care about any of it any more.  I’m over it.  I look at things I’ve loved for so long and I’m just over it. Is that horrible?”  I don’t remember what I answered (didn’t know she meant my childhood, our whole lives together, surely she didn’t mean that exactly) probably responded that it might just be the numbness of so much grief and loss happening all at once that this is kind of a defense mechanism.  I’ll keep everything for you, Mama.  Maybe one day soon you’ll want it back.

Then again maybe not.

As keeper of the treasure I feel the weight of all who have gone before more profoundly than ever.  I have furniture and wall hangings and treasures with rich, variegated stories, swords and knives from all over the world, figurines and plates and, plateware, a window from Mama Ruth’s house, Chinese praying Jesus from Mema’s house, quilts from grands I never met, a village carved from a single piece of mahogany three feet long, and I can’t let go of any of it because I want my Dad back.

The problem is clothes

100414 The problem is clothes.

What is more glorious than the sunrise?  Or the sunset?  Especially in south Florida?  My home has a delightful patio in middle of the back, screened in, with privacy created by two oak trees, a couple of pines, and some other bizarre palms and ficus and hibiscus and oleander and bamboo and other things I don’t know the names of. The neighborhood is squeezed together somewhat so that blocks the view—I have a very dappled southerly view of branches near and far and these green beasts I’ve named.

I would have to leave the house in search of the sunrise and sunset.  To leave the house I would have to dress.  The problem is putting on clothes.

Just this morning I discovered, after living here about five years, that the best view of the skies at sunrise is out my bathroom window—the one over the toilet.  This is most unfortunate for any kind of meditative gazing.  To go out into the yard would involve shoes because between my patio and that side yard is an expanse of wet mulched ground and then the grasses on that side yard by Saturday are long a mucky with torrential rains of the night before and dew. And I’d have to drag a chair out from the inside.

Sounds like a lot of excuses.  I did stand facing the toilet this morning and looked out the window at the view between my neighbors’ house that faces an angle away from my visage, and their tree line which is quite far from their door.  They have a lovely view out their back over the corner of the rolling golf course.  No one around here really sees the sunrise, just the red lines the clouds make when there are clouds, against that icy blue colored sky so early in the morning.  It’s not long before the reds fade to pinks like cotton candy and then change to the gauzy white as the clouds seem to be left behind from the storms that tore through here last night.  They, these leftover clouds, move imperceptibly, soaking up the warming sun.

The report back from the HOA is that I have a great deal of growth (told through chuckles over the phone) growing on my roof.  I noticed that for the first time driving home yesterday.  I do have.  On the roof that’s right over my kitchen where the bay window protrudes.  The mossy green on the roof is probably about a yard by a yard and quite healthy with the bright green of my distant homeland at least four generations back.  I couldn’t help but smile when I saw it as I drove by—just a quick glimpse.  I like having a garden on the roof so bright green.  Very fetching.

How the heck am I supposed to get that off of there?  Spend a fortune for someone else to do it. The someone elses came to do it apparently but couldn’t because I have six or seven broken tiles and that must be fixed before the germicide poisoning whatever it’s called will happen on the roof as part of what the company is doing in preparing the houses to paint.

But I digress.

The point is the problem of clothing.  I sit in the mornings that I crave and enjoy, nay BASQUE in, in a large green Irish teeshirt that I cannot feel on my skin, it’s why I wear it, and my tiger print pajama bottoms that likewise comfort without really touching my skin.  I don’t even go to the mailbox in these clothes.  I certainly can’t drive out to the beach for the sunrise—plus it takes me away from the patio.  Nor can I drive out to the bridge—which I haven’t fully figured out how I would do that anyway—to watch the sunset.  I’d have to walk the bridge to see the sunset and I am just not into that at the moment.  Perhaps I will one day.

I would also love to go to the pelican or osceola café for breakfast but again, the problem is getting dressed and missing out on this holy of holies—time and space in such comfort and quiet and absolutely private surroundings—except for the mucky squirrels and the occasional rabbit and sometimes the mourning doves...the occasional armadillo and family that migrate through are perhaps my favorite.  Don’t know why.  Love their rolly polly look and their quiet foraging.  They are a vision of the ancient times when dinosaurs ruled the world and yet somehow futuristic silver armored scales so neatly laid from head to tail in that slight rounding of the back.  Their claws are beautiful, their snouts perfect, waddling along wearing their armored clothing they were born with.

They don’t have to dress.  And neither do I.  Except I also need to go to the grocery store and really should go now or 20 minutes ago when the store opened to avoid the Saturday crowds but I don’t want to pull on the undergarments that squeeze the most sensitive parts of me or have to pull on clothes that remind me of how much weight I need to lose as I head for the market where I will purchase more of what will keep the weight on me.   The hair and face would need some attention as well.  I’m not lazy, just drained of all humanity’s noise and views and eyeballs and interchanges.  I just want to sit here and read and write and daydream into the luscious healing shades of viscous greens and unselfconscious mammals and birds and color morphing sky patches and only occasional voices of walkers who cannot see me.  I love not being seen!  And I do not want to go out there where I will be seen and heard and have to see back and hear.

So it’s the clothes.  And the face.  The eyes and ears.  Overexposure sends me to retreat in my open and glorious cave...  But I miss out on the sunrise and sunset and I’m hungry.  But I just can’t miss out on the even more precious quiet hours of sunrise and lingering in the words from books and emails and online readings and my own words clicking across the pale icy lighted screen....  I only wish of the two—sunrise or sunset—I could at least fully absorb one from my home.

I don't know what to do

I don’t know what to do.

The line rings in my ears—sometimes it’s louder in my own voice, sometimes in my dad’s. The confusion in his searching gaze haunts me, jabs and tears at the flesh of my heart and the sting sears through my veins and aches in my throat.

I don’t know what to do.

How many times did he ask me what was wrong?  Why was he here?  And I would tell him a variation of how the doctors found cancer in his stomach and in his liver and filling his veins soon to take over his heart.  I told him how it was all preventing him from being able to sleep, from being able to get to the bathroom by himself and how Mama could no longer safely help him. So he was here where he could get help.

He would then say, “I don’t know what to do.”  Those sad, hazel colored eyes have haunted me for years, though.  I would hold his hand, palm-thumb curled—his right hand to my right hand, like arm wrestling with inevitable truth—and I would say, “Me neither.  I don’t know what to do either, Dad. I wish I did.”  Then we would sit together like that for eternity.

Later we were told that we (the so-called living) think in bigger pictures, more extended meaning, larger contexts.  One who is as ill as Dad, one who is dying, has a very simple and immediate world.  Answers should be simple and immediate.  (Like he would ask if everyone was out of the house—we were in the hospice wing of the hospital—is everyone out of the house? Are we alone now? ...  Yes! We’re alone...what word do you have for us, what insight, what treasure, what wisdom? ... No, he only wanted the opportunity to launch from the bed and outrun the orderlies to the bathroom for a little privacy to do his business.)

So how much worse did I make his confusion?  How much harder did I make his transition?  I apparently was as confused by his question as he must have been by my answer.  He would look at me with such concentration and determination to understand.  I languished in my determination to be honest and truthful.  Then he would nod and put his head back upon the pillow.

Sometimes I think no matter how much time passes, I will weep tears of grief.  Sometimes I think no matter how much time passes, I will feel pain in the memory of those last hours, days, weeks, months, years... a mere instant.  Sometimes I think no matter how much time passes, I will long with every fiber of my essence to have him back, everyone back, everyone right, everyone here, everyone whole, everyone now.

What is it about that statement that twists the knife in my soul?  I don’t know what to do.

This primordial drive to do something.  Even so long since the dying.  Even now.  It is all one moment.  I don’t know what to do.  We long to act.  Long to fix it.  Make it right.  Do something.  Engage.

The only thing I know to do is write.  Tell the story.  Express.  This helps me regain my sense of balance and being after the hopelessness of unknowing.

Is it really part of our nature, part of our original created essence, to need to do something?  Or is it indicative of how far we have strayed from our true nature?  Be still.  Know I am God.  These are two things we are told to do.  Be still.  Know I am God.  Psalm 46.  The whole psalm is about radical and violent change, and about a new heaven and new earth.  End to war.  God’s presence until then, God’s help in time of trouble.  Be still.  Know I am God.

It is only comforting, hopeful, when by some miracle you...I...do it.

Machete backstory

091514

Almost exactly a year ago the HOA (homeowners’ association) sent me one of those letters that lines out all the ways you’re embarrassing the neighborhood.  Only this time it was a polite letter requesting me to give them permission to take out the acacia palms in the front courtyard of my house.  They’re too tall so don’t meet the regulation of 15' max height.  But since it was the previous owner who planted them, they said, they would take them out at no cost to me, would I please call to verify my permission.  I called.  I permitted.

Three months later I received a threatening letter about how I had 60 days to remove those acacia palms or be fined some gawdawful amount of money.  I nearly swallowed my tongue, teeth, lips and chin!  I was livid.  I called.   I asked.

“We changed our minds.” Yeah, that was all he said.

“I’m sorry to hear that.  Because I have a letter, which you signed, which says you will pull them out with no charge to me and they haven’t been pulled out and I’m not paying a fine for anything.”

“I understand.  We changed our mind.  So you need to have those pulled up.  I’m sure you understand that we can’t afford to bail out every homeowner who has a preexisting violation to the standards.”

“Then I have no choice but to repeat myself.  I have a letter, a signed document, stating that they will in fact be pulled out at no charge to me.”

“I understand.  Perhaps there is a concession.”

See, the other thing going on at the time was that 180 miles away, my father was very ill and had just been diagnosed with all sorts of horrific sounding cancer so I wasn’t really in the mood to negotiate what had already been clearly stated in a signed document.

“What kind of concession?”

“What if we have the landscapers cut it way back?”

“Well of course that works for me.  Isn’t that what they do anyway?  You can cut them down to the nubs, for all I care.  I’m just saying I’m not paying a fine over it.  I don’t care what you do to those palms.”

“All right then, I’ll pass along that information.”

Somewhere in between time I told my neighbor about this fiasco and turns out he’s on the board!!!  Isn’t that peachy!  I explained to him about Dad and he said he would back the HOA off a little—there were several items on their to do list, some of which I had done before getting the letter the FIRST time so to see it on the list of threats wasn’t helping me much on any level.

The first time the landscapers came through they did cut them back and trim them beautifully so I figured they changed their minds again and just decided to make them pretty.  Didn’t give it another thought.

I was away nearly every weekend and then Dad died and I don’t much remember the last two and a half months of school.  The minute I left campus for the last time I drove to Mama’s for our road trip to visit relatives and attend my niece’s wedding.  Then upon return I spent the summer at Mama’s cleaning out the house as she was moving to a smaller, more economical apartment and I had to bring two full car loads home, mostly of Dad’s things.

Nobody had touched the acacia trees in those three to four months.  No one.  The landscapers had done NOTHING since that first time after the phone call.  So they were way overgrown and I have a bush in the back that’s way overgrown.  As Mama moved the first in between weekend of school, I was with her the following two weekends but this past weekend I had to proctor national testing so stayed home.  Plus next week I am taking a couple of days to go over for four days with friends and cousins who are all picking up the last of the things Mama can’t keep.

Next month is when people walk the property and generate the list of threats and I’m royally ticked off about the acacia and now I want them DOWN.  Just out of here.  Gone.  Tired of them.

A few weeks ago I wrote a couple of friends in the area to see if I could borrow a chainsaw.  One flat out said no because she would not let me put myself in danger and her husband’s back was out so, no.  The other one has been separated from her husband so she said she’d check.  But then life happens.  So yesterday, Sunday, was a pretty nice day.  I texted my friend to ask again about the chainsaw, and then took the limb cutters out there to at least cut what young trunks I could.  Made some headway.  Got the ladder.  Managed to also cut down some of the fronds that were bending back onto the roof tiles.  But those damn trees had gotten so thick in the trunk!

Of course I’m muttering under my breath about the landscapers and whether I should go next door and mention it again to my neighbor friend—but then I remembered even HE forgot the agreement and somewhere in passing on my way out of town he asked from his driveway through my open car window if I was going to have those things removed or what?  “DUDE!” I said, but I didn’t say dude, I said his name.  “Remember?  I talked to XYZ who said the LANDSCAPERS were gonna cut it way back.  So I expect they’ll do that at some point along here soon?”  And the sweet old guy nodded his head and waved me off with his lumbering arm and I thought we’d communicated.  I was wrong.

Then I remembered!  My dad had a collection of ornate knives from all over the world—big ones as well as a tiny hara kiri knife.  I remembered one particular gorgeous machete in a beautiful leather scabbard from, I think, somewhere in South America.  Could at least try it, right?  I had nothing to lose?  I unsheathed it inside the house, not wanting to attract any more attention than necessary outside.  Wow did it feel good!  The handle seemed made for exactly my hand!  And it wasn’t heavy at all and the edge was shiny sharp.  I started on the most hidden of the clump of trees and with two hands whacked down at one growing out of the side of a bigger one—the motion was straight down so would be the most successful to begin with, I thought.  O my goodness, it was so nice.  The blade was old and black with use but not really rusty per se. But the edge was sharper than anything I’ve ever used.  I was hooked!  It was a fabulous experience cutting down that tree.  I cut down five in all.  The ones growing straight I of course had to angle, but I maintained a somewhat straight down chop, angled slightly to the left and just went to town.  Chips flew.  It was so satisfying.

Thanks, Dad!  Cool tools!   Oh, there are still four trees left...but it will be a week or so before I could do that again!

Machete Waits

Dark worn wooden handle settled in my hand like the cheek of an infant, pressed into, shaped into, it fit.  My fingers curled around as if finding home and relaxed.  Long blade crescent black and sharp glint of metal defining razor sharp.  So light.  Two hands one blow sank deep into flesh of acacia as big around as my calves.  Each hack effective, exposing vibrant healthy pale gold.  Like ancient farmer whacking down sugar cane.  Quiet death to such strength and organic power no match for the cold cinder block construction around it and topped with terracotta tiles that absorb the ants crawling across the backbending fronds fountaining out through the topless courtyard prison.  It had to die.  Civilized concrete structure must be protected and maintained.  Machete waits. Acacia will grow back.

seeing auntie bb again being with auntie bb now

i did not post this when i wrote it in june 2013...seemed too personal.  still is.  but now i am gathering stories from between death and resurrection.

061213

Her eyes were green—slightly darker than peridot, slightly darker than the pristine waters at Abaco...they were vibrant with life and I looked into them as if by looking and holding the gaze I would hold her in my life and in her living.  I wasn’t aware I was dreaming, I wasn’t really dreaming, but I was asleep, or rather, I was aware that this was a moment outside the time of wakeful passing.  I was aware that I had to look at her, look at her vibrant green eyes in all their clarity and reality, dimension and being; it was up to me, to my unbroken visual and visible bond in seeing her that would sustain her and sustain me and sustain all the relationship that we had known my entire life. If I looked away, she would be lost to me.  I made a mental note, too, of how the coloring of her eyelids matched that green of her eyes but not with the harshness of a teenager who might be experimenting, not with the cheap application of the shallow attempt to seduce, it was somehow a transfiguration, an appropriate compliment to her eyes, as if the color emanated from them like a prism throws light from the sun. There was a slight holding of my breath in that shadow of disbelief when gazing at someone loved and lost, having the perpetual body memory of embrace at the occasional physical meetings on holiday, that holding of breath in suspending the unmoving moment beyond time to absorb presence and recognize someone in soul while certain physicalities didn’t conform with certain memories.  In shared life she was darker in hair color, and makeup—her lids were always a subtle red earth tone.  Her eyes a fascinating gray like blue shadows over heather, the blue gray of distant appalachian mountains in mist.  Striking beauty, heads would literally turn in double take when we were out and about. Her age had always been about 25 years older and while she did not look at all like a photo of her in youth, this was her soul gazing back at me through that color of green I cannot describe and is fading, dulling, shifting in the attempt.  This “dream” did not have the timber of other dreams, it was not made of the same stuff.  It was real.  It felt like the clairvoyance I possessed when I was so young and prayed to have it pass.  Now I regret that prayer.  And now I have had this prayer answered.  She was there with me.  We shared our being, our connection, our selves beyond this material life but with the material that engages the senses.  This time she did not touch me.  When she was alive, I would dream of her and it would be the form of her I have always known and it would be her laugh and it would be our shared stories and it would be our walks along the beach and it would be her maternal embrace and it would be a visit that I always longed for and never had enough of and it would be her life without the hindrances of her commitments, and mine.  But this was only being.  This was only her face gazing back at mine, not looking like her but being her.  I want to believe...that this was an outstretched affirmation that she is ... still ... living beyond this quintessence of dust and pain and heartache and situation.  I feel her.  I long for her.  But not in the way I always had before in wishing I could figure out a way to travel to visit...but in a way that hopes beyond empirical doubts that there is more beyond this mortal coil and that we will BE in that space I glimpsed, that presence I felt, that connection I live in...

Getting it! ... and not

083114 lectio on Matthew 16

The only time they/Peter got it right was when he channeled God.  When that Narrow Way struck and the openness to hearing God connected with speaking to God...  It was all God.  Alpha and Omega.  “You are the Son of God.  The Messiah.  The One we are all awaiting.”  Jesus marveled at such insight, such openness.  “You know this because GodSelf has revealed it to and through you!  How cool is that!”  I know that feeling.  Among students who seem to be half listening, getting it wrong, like stones they sit and stare toward me, sometimes nodding, sometimes smiling at my jokes which are attempts to check their pulse, their attention.  Then I ask a question.  One skinny arm will go up and I’ll acknowledge and then they nail it.  Deeply get it.  It is thrilling!  The reason I teach!  The reason I put up with all the idiotic bureaucratic public school bullshit—it’s for that one student who breaks the sound barrier in his head and gets it.  “YOU GOT IT!”  Sheer joy!  “Keep that up and you’ll ace this class!”  Jesus’ equivalent but of course far more profound is the “keys” to the kingdom—the answers, the secrets, the inside joke is yours, dude.  Favorite student, right there.  It is intoxicating.

But then ten minutes later, it seems, the same kid says something that completely puts everything into question.  “Excuse me?  What did you just say?  Seriously?”  My teacher brows furrow and I shake my head—more upset with how excited and fooled I was when he seemed to have all the answers before and am slapped silly with the reality that he’s just a stupid kid.

Face to face with the mirror.  I’m just as stupid.  It takes a minute to regroup and keep teaching...keep pressing them forward to learning....

We’re all like that—the poor little student who’s just trying to figure it all out.  Nadia Bolz-Weber said it well that she never really dreamed she could be called to be a preacher and yet she can so clearly hear God miraculously speak through her.  Someone will ask her a question and she responds, then is wholly shocked at what amazing things come out of her mouth that seem to be precisely what’s needed to be said at that moment.  On the other hand, she is also fully and keenly aware, and warns her parishioners and visitors, that it is inevitable they will be at some point disappointed and even hurt or offended.  It is the way of things.

It is the way of things.

But the ways of God are not our ways.

The angst is living in the tension of our reality in the hope of Reality.  One minute we get it, we see a glimpse of God, feel the breath of the Holy Spirit stir us to understanding and a peace that transcends and we have loosed on earth what is loosed in heaven!  Then the next minute we feel the sting of the Divine slap to snap us out of our own audacity, that insidious hubris that seems to be the muck and mud of our humanity—“Get behind me, Satan.”  Whaaaat?  I was just saying I want to spare you the pain and humiliation.  I just meant I got your back.  I just...  SHUT UP already.  Listen.

Insight is great.  Acting on that insight seems to be the next step.  And again with contradictions, the twisting of the plot, the shift in the conflict.  What does Jesus mean with “pick up your cross”?  What is the “cross” in this metaphor?  The great divide between what is worth dying for and what is worth living for (isn’t that the same thing?)  The fate of anyone who stands up against the abusive status quo—?  Is it simply a mandate to take responsibility for yourself and your choices?  To accept with maturity the way of things—living in the Real means possibly choosing a narrow path that will be rejected, ridiculed, misunderstood?

I should probably shut up and listen.  I am now trying to speak of things and ways beyond me.

Before I Knew It

073114

Long journeys into night
as a child I hunkered down in the floor board
curled into the bucket where feet should go
a box of kleenex, tote umbrella, empty paper cup
pushed further under the seat like secrets
my cheek on the scratchy carpet
same color as my hamster
but if you wiggled just right it was comfortable
and warm.  The hum pulled me to sleep.

Later, half awake, cooler air revived me just enough
to feel
softer embrace in the bucket of Dad’s arms
he carried me through the dim light of home again home again
jiggity jog
he laid me to rest like a most precious treasure
in my own bed
I briefly expanded between the cooler brighter sheets
and softest feather pillow that held the shape of my head
from the night before
and off to sleep before I knew it

before I knew it
now I awake from the dream of his presence
gone before I knew it

between death and resurrection

050514 early this morning I was overwhelmed again with that fierce burning desire to know that God really Is and that there is a heaven and that one day we who are beloved will be reunited and that desire extended to being one of the beloved and rather humbled at knowing it all so profoundly depended on trust and faith and I fear perpetually whether I have it in me to be so loved among the beloved if there is a beloved...and that circle just kept spinning and I think I was trying to articulate that in an email to Miriam and I basically only got so far as clumsily and without much ability to communicate it set down the words “God to Be” but looking at the email now, that’s as much as I actually penned but what happened in my head was this spinning desire and pursuit of being and knowing and feeling and understanding and having this conflicting painful sense that I couldn’t know and nothing would ever be right again and all I wanted was for God to be and for me to be able to SEE God and KNOW God and have no doubt about it and swarming in the back of all that was that same sense of brief connection with the disciples in the room between death and resurrection and how frustrating it is to see such a horrific death and those images keep tormenting me out of the blue sometimes and this is what I see and this is what is blocking me from the internal seeing that there is Heaven and so none of that stuff matters any more if there is God and is Heaven then it’s forgiven and understood within a different context and it’s all okay but my soul was crying out that this is crazy—I can’t SEE God!  I can’t SEE heaven or SEE Dad and I can’t SEE what isn’t right here before my eyes!  This feeling tormented me beyond words which were not there to be articulated this morning, only the feelings and the longings and tears rained down my face and my nose started running—I was sitting right there on the sofa where I always sit and writing on the computer or so I thought and I looked to my right where my box of kleenex sits right beside me on the cushion and it wasn’t there, but it’s always there but it wasn’t so I looked behind the throw pillows because sometimes I throw it back there when it gets in my feet’s way when watching tv and it wasn’t there so I looked on the floor because sometimes I kick it off by accident and it wasn’t there, not on the end table either and my nose was now running down my upper lip and I mumbled some incoherent expletive about the kleenex box that had to be there because it was there last night, as I walk indignantly into the kitchen to the box that always sits on the counter by the sink and I blew my nose and went back to the sofa and sat down and right there beside my leg on the sofa right there where it always is was that box of kleenex.  Right there where I had looked for it and around it and everywhere and it was NOT there before.  It was NOT.  I looked for it right there and didn’t see it.    I was right there that whole time and looked everywhere around it. How could it possibly have been there all along when I did NOT see it???

Holy Saturday and Dad's Memorial Service

041914

holy Saturday.  Day of Dad’s memorial service.  Not possible.  Writing it like that ravages my soul.  And this morning there will soon be chaos and ensuring this and that and suddenly the service will happen and the reception and I want to be there and I’m afraid I’ll scoot through it and it will all be over and I won’t have been really there.  Really present.  Because somehow in my head I think to be there is to be so present that time itself can’t pass.  Being there somehow should transcend time and rule time and yet...time keeps passing and proving that we’re not really here...not fully...not wholly...not truly.  Someday we will be here.  

so glad I awoke so early in this holy darkness...awoke surrounded by all the disciples...trying to get their head around what just happened...how horrible it was to watch him die like that.  Totally expected—he had told them he was going to die like that—but totally surprising.  Horrifying.  Unthinkable.  I’m sure they swirled heady and light with both fear and hope, doubt and sustaining story.  Remembering what Isaiah said.  Remembering Moses.  The psalmist.  It is written.  It is written.  Inscribed.  Spoken.  The only truth that matters, the only power that sustains, the spoken written word.  They gathered as we are going to do to remind each other of what he said and did, of what was written, they had yet to see the resurrection...they were in that horrible state of loss and shock and doubt and hope and fear and connection and reassurance and unknowing.  Perhaps one of them remembered the 139th psalm...when I awake, I am still with you...

It is also the 19th anniversary of the murrah bombing.  Dad was there for that.  He said he heard it as he was leaving the house, but it sounded like a sonic boom and as they lived nearer to stretches of country he thought perhaps maneuvers were being practiced.  Except that the dog started barking.  He knew it was something else.  And then his phone started ringing.  He coordinated the emergency phone information center for that day...turned out he was there for something like 72 hours without sleep connecting people and information...   That day then did not fall on holy Saturday as it does today...but those who survived have felt this same range of feelings and questions and ... this same sense of unreal movement of time impossible to grasp...

So blessedly quiet right now.  I have not awakened to such blessed quiet in a long time.  I have not been able to write in a long time.  Not from a place of peace and reflection.  I do not want to get up from this place...I do not want the day and the time to sweep me into the unconscious of survival but I know it will.  I know that soon keri and her family will come and we will go to the chapel and make sure the equipment is there.  I know that soon music will fill a chapel haunted by those of us who gather to talk about Dad and then we’ll move into reception and talk and laugh and tell stories and eat...and that will last for who knows how long and then we will slowly reluctantly eventually retire into the night and it will be over and life will go on impossibly and uncertainly and folks will then tomorrow attend the Easter services in the hope of resurrection...

And life will go on.  Nothing will ever really be right again until the hope becomes real...

One Billion Rising for Justice in Martin County

The City of Stuart in Martin County is excited to announce the first annual ONE BILLION RISING event in association with the global movement founded by Eve Ensler. The campaign will build upon the energy and momentum that was created on February 14, 2013 when one billion activists in 207 countries and territories came together to rise, strike, and dance, in the biggest mass action in human history, to demand an end to violence against women and girls.
This year, we will focus on the issue of justice for all survivors of gender violence, and ending the rampant impunity that prevails globally.  On February 14th we are calling on women, men and youth around the Treasure Coast to RISE, RELEASE, DANCE, and demand JUSTICE against violence!  ONE BILLION RISING FOR JUSTICE IN MARTIN COUNTY will be held at the Gazebo Park in downtown Stuart from 6:00p.m. until 10:00p.m. on Friday, February 14, 2014.  The campaign is a recognition that we cannot end violence against women without looking at the intersection of poverty, racism, war, the plunder of the environment, capitalism, imperialism, and patriarchy. Impunity lives at the heart of these interlocking forces.
            ONE BILLION RISING FOR JUSTICE is a call to action for survivors to end their silence, BREAK THE CHAIN, and share their stories—through art, dance, songs, spoken word, testimonials, and whatever way feels right. According to U.N. statistics worldwide, one in every three women will be beaten or raped in her lifetime. That’s ONE BILLION women. It’s time to take a stand.  Time to sing loudly.  Time to dance our celebration that we are all more than the abuses we’ve suffered.
The event is free!  Come hear Mindi Fetterman with the Inner Truth Project share her story of abuse, survival, and the power to heal. Jennifer Borowicz of SafeSpace will address teen issues—February is Teen Dating Violence Awareness month.  Martin County Sheriff William Snyder will also be attending the rally.  So join us! Come learn the BREAK THE CHAINS dance.  There will be yoga, martial arts, Jazzersize, The Broken Tubas, the Shepherd Park Drum Circle, dance performances from the Port Salerno, Palm City and East Stuart Boys and Girls clubs, and much more!
Eve Ensler, founder of the One Billion Rising movement, poet and playwright, discusses security in her 2005 TED Talk as being possible only in community.  We must know each other, hear each other’s stories, come together and refuse to be the victims of violence.  For more information about the global rise against violence, go to www.onebillionrising.org.  All donations raised from the event will go to the Inner Truth Project and SafeSpace. For more information about these two organizations, visit http://www.innertruthproject.org/  and http://www.safespacefl.org/contact.html.  For more information about the event, please contact Olivia Ranieri at ranieriolivia@gmail.com or 772.834.9611.  Also check out our events page at
http://www.onebillionrising.org/events/one-billion-rising-for-justice-martin-county/.  Be sure to like us on Facebook and share the invitation with all your friends!
“ONE BILLION RISING FOR JUSTICE is a global call to women survivors of violence and those who love them to gather safely in community outside places where they are entitled to justice --- courts, police stations, government offices, colleges, work places, military courts, places of worship, homes. It is a call to survivors to break the silence and release their stories – politically, spiritually, outrageously --- through art, dance, marches, ritual, song, spoken word, testimonies and whatever way feels right.”  --http://www.onebillionrising.org/ways-to-rise

https://www.facebook.com/OneBillionRisingMartinCounty