How are you showing up in the world today?
Intermittently, like misting rain?
Softly retreating, sun in the clouds?
Do you show up with anger,
and is it even the time?
Do you show up at all?
Do you show up when
you hear the call?
For others?
For yourself?
Come through,
clear and consistent,
be seen.
Be where you are.
It beats being
nowhere at all.
I don't know when she thrashed her last
or gasped in recognition
the end had come,
or even if she did,
but she is gone.
I know the dirt thrown over
her is
fertile,
because I am here
and I grow.
I will try to
remember her with gentleness,
for she was also
me.
Anxiety starts with "what ifs"--
but dreams start with "what if," too.
and how you end that sentence
is entirely up to you.
What if things were better?
What if they already were good--
what if you started off grateful,
and the universe understood?
What if your prayer was preparation
and your mind could do the rest?
What if you woke up each day
knowing you were blessed?
What if you were fully present
and finally awake?
Maybe that's all you need
and all that it would take.
(First see Unheroic Interlude 1)
Did I introduce myself? No, I started
my saga in media res--
so, here's how I got myself
in my current mess, I guess.
If I could, I would give you my name
but I left it in another life
in my other pants, to my shame,
in a moment of strife.
I was raised in the shadow of Olympus
a cast-off twig of the family tree--
no titan, no goddess, just a mutt,
if you need any description of me.
In her new skin
flows the underground waters--
the same that flows
in the veins of her father,
an ancestral flood
of history
and also renewal;
the back-and-forth mystery of time,
like the winding of serpents
in her blood.
It all comes back:
the cloak of invulnerability
made of her weaknesses;
the shining armor
of her raw, sparkling nerve;
the girdle of confidence
made of scars;
the jewels that have
a thousand glittering flaws;
the sword of discernment
forged in the fire of mistakes;
the words of power
that are uncomfortable truths--
all and always contained
under her skin.
The wasteland is no longer
a land of the dead--
it is a teeming womb of the living,
and she is reborn.
Her love is with her
wherever she goes.
As the flowers share the sun
under which they've grown,
the brightest light inside your life
is nothing you can own.
Your eyes, the portals to your soul,
were left open, and I slipped right in.
In I fell, lost in deep water,
full immersion baptism in
the sacred river. The surface still--
but the undertow! Running
to some place guarded like
the holy of holies.
Escorted out, flaming sword at my throat,
I crept away in my soggy clown shoes,
a jester smile of astonishment
plastered on my face,
psychically thrown by unexpected grace,
wondering if I might return.
And I became aware
of something pooling deep inside of me--
the forgotten eternal spring--
the abandoned depths of my own.
I had been on fire
and still smoke in places
a haze drifting around me
and that unmistakable scent.
Parts of me are ashes
and I don't care
where they went.
Not traumatized--
cauterized.
The bleeding stopped.
The past is a scar,
tough but fading.
We are
not wrecks,
but what escaped them.
She hangs by her ankles,
iron hook run in.
She hangs by the bones of her ankles,
feet above head.
The dry heat of the land
where the sun doesn't shine
and the rain doesn't fall
bakes her skull
and her soul is thirsting.
And here she is, bereft:
no cloak of invulnerability,
no shining armor,
no girdle of confidence,
gone are her jewels,
her sword of discerning,
her words of power--
even her skin is gone.
The shadow of her tongue longs
for wine.
The shadow of her tongue yearns
for water.
But she can taste:
blood of a soldier
tears of a lover
sweat of a laborer.
And new skin forms over
the dry chalk of her form.
Where love was gone
the dry world sighed for what was lost
and the maiden left her couch to see:
Nothing bloomed in the garden
and no tree bore fruit.
The air had no birdsong and
rain would not fall.
She would find love and return.
What she can't take with her
will drop onto the path:
the cloak of invulnerability,
her shining armor,
her girdle of confidence,
her many jewels,
her sword of discerning,
the words of power--
gone.
The skin unwound from her flesh,
the fat rendered in the heat,
the nerves exposed and made
into a garland for a holy tree.
Her bones walked into
the land of the dead
to find her love.
That we were living
unforgiven,
the days dark and long
and knew no respite
from the fall of night
but the hope of
something strong
enough to stand against
the terror,
self-made
that we were not enough.
The child was born to
tell the world we are
worthy of his love.
Whomever, however.
We are here to love and be loved.
And he said
what you have done unto others
you have done to me.
And they did him dirty
for breaking it down like that.
And for what they did to him,
I have stayed angry.
For every hungry soul unfed
for every true martyr bled,
for every hard skulled saint
who blessed the world
for wanting it to be what it ain't.
For those who so willing to cough
up nails to hammer into
human frail
flesh, the Herods and
Pilates who don't understand--
but present themselves in charge.
I have loved him,
the one I don't worship,
for saying it aloud
in words that shamed the pompous and proud,
the rebel teacher
who said love one another
and meant it enough
to go down for the words.
I have loved him, detached from the mystery absurd.
And through all of it
I can wish love to you too.
In the way that injured prophet
wanted me to.
For the great tidings
are that life is now, and forgiveness is near
as the asking and
we are commanded to love,
and if we do,
follow in the way
the light we throw will lengthen the day,
push back the dark,
rebuke the fear.
This is Christmas. This is rebirth.
The Great Work of bringing peace on earth,
I weep for those who have
championed his cross
and for all the world, rejoiced at his loss.
And all our many losses too.
Still peace and good tidings come to you.
And to all your family too.
But we can not guarantee the good year.
For the faith you have is not without its fears.
And the ransom of your soul
has been in arrears,
for what blood was ever enough?
If not his?
But sin persists.
And the lack of love,
and the promotion of it,
and if the Spirit was a Dove
it would baptize you in its shit.
