March blessings

March is fresh, the only one you’ll get out of 2019, the only March 2019 you’ll get in your whole life. Spring is near—it is crouched down hidden in thick tree limbs with yellow eyes glowing in the dark of winter waiting to —YES! SPRING— into the world once again in the blessed cycle of seasons.  Birth is painful and rebirth carries with it much of the pain in memories and lives lived and relived and waiting to be touched deeply where healing can swell and embrace the hurts and losses and regrets and let me tell you this spring, this one, the one just on the rim of our reality will be held in awe even as it devours me as earth devours the seeds lying dormant...I will hold it all in awe as I learn and relearn to marvel with great gratitude how we are all connected whether we see it or hear it or taste it or not the reality is there and it sounds like quiet cool trickles of spring water melting down the rocky hills and it smells like jasmine at night and lavender in the morning and looks like streaks of yellow and green and red and purple spilled out across the skies and feels like lambs’ wool and smells like pancakes and all these sensations and images are known to you because we are connected and when we love or walk alongside in whatever capacity we extend gifts whether sweet like caramel and chocolate or difficult but necessary like digging out cancer the gifts we extend are connections that will multiply into blessings we cannot imagine right now big and small but always there for the taking and receiving and giving back and this morning I marvel at my love for words and stories coursing deep in my hereditary veins and observed in my father’s life and my mother’s love of books and my sister and I wrote stories and made up songs and made books all our lives and of my greatest loves is the storyteller from the deepest south and her writing influenced a Chinese writer I have read before and now because of friendship shared in mutual love of story on stage and film who welcomed me into her family and realm of friends and love of stories and writing words on paper and extended a find of flash fiction which I now explore and read and just this morning that Chinese writer is being showcased and his great influence is my favorite writer and I am panting with anticipation to read his stories again and reenter her world of stories and what a great thing right here on the edge of falling off into more days ahead full to overflowing with overwhelming emotions extreme and calming and an answer to the prayer of my deepest longing to find the connections I often fear I have lost and now I remember I re*member we are all inextricably connected for better and worse and all the worse will be better because we take a moment to look at each other and our lives and our gifts with eyes of gratitude and hearts tender for the touching.

the story will save you

there are still people who believe that the marches are all and only about women...there are definitely people who believe the marches were about "trump haters"...so i know that there are people who still do not get what is actually happening to all of us.

one minute i'm hopeful that in speaking out, we may be heard...

the next minute i wonder if i have enough scotch to last the night...

then...somewhere in a quiet moment i'll remember this is nothing new throughout history...people speak and no one is listening. the people speaking are trying to include everyone but the people they're speaking for and to are not listening. couple thousand years ago there was this guy who didn't even have a residential address---all he did was walk from city to city and tell stories and talk to people and lead them to healing (the ones who would let him), who were listening. hey, it's like this people, you have the power to love each other and be there for one another no matter what. life is hard---help each other out. follow me... there is poverty and sickness and evil in the world but you have a better way...me...just be there, speak up, love each other. that's all he really said. and they crucified him.

i'm not saying any of us is the messiah or the sum of all who are speaking out are the messiah, i'm just saying a precedent was set long ago so that we can see that we're not the first to be mocked and misunderstood and marginalized. or worse.

just don't give up. one step at a time. be here. stand up. stand together. all of us now have a common threat, a common concern... keep telling the story...the story will save you. it will.

and here's the thing...they crucified him. but that is not the end of the story. there is life after death. there is. we are more than the suffering and affliction we endure. there is hope that following Life, there will be life...following Love there will be love... sometimes it's very hard to believe when you're suffering or losing or hated or misunderstood or bullied or abused or attacked or raped or ignored. believing is a better choice, though. choose life. choose love. the story will save you---this is not the end of the story.

4th Day Poem challenge

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March caves in
caves into my annual calendar
like a florida sinkhole
having given one precious life
takes another
or year
or more
so much promise
pollinating all that is natural
with promise of Easter’s supernatural
hope in life hereafter
beyond the sinkhole
beyond the depth of fear
and the warmth
left on the sofa cushion
a minute only after rising

gratitude grows, cracks the seed of grief
Resurrection morning following on the cusp
of dead and buried

holy darkness...memory sentence 3.01.13

5:00 a.m. Out of the silent, holy darkness a clear and piercing call of the mocking bird as crisp as the early March air snaps me out of my musings and into the moment.  A call to worship.  My mind suddenly at rest, I am welcomed into a pure and stark world of great peace and contentment.