I Miss New Mexico

(By Mary Oliver)
Climbing the Chagrin River

We enter
the green river,
heron harbor,
mud-basin lined
with snagheaps, where turtles
sun themselves--we push
through the falling
silky weight
striped warm and cold
bounding down
through the black flanks
of wet rocks--we wade
under hemlock
and white pine--climb
stone steps into
the timeless castles
of emerald eddies,
swirls, channels
cold as ice tumbling
out of a white flow--
sheer sheets
flying off rocks,
frivolous and lustrous,
skirting the secret pools--
cradles
full of the yellow hair
of last year’s leaves
where grizzled fish
hang halfway down,
like tarnished swords,
while around them
fingerlings sparkle
and descend,
nails of light
in the loose
racing waters.

Hello, Again

In the past year-plus of neglecting this blog, I have begun to study and practice what I really love- Creative writing.

Care for an excerpt from my first story-telling class? O-kay!
___________________________________

Tabitha and I understood without saying that most conversation is nervous chatter weaker people use to compensate for a fear of intimacy. Still, we had waited. After the requisite pleasantries had been exchanged we passed a polite introductory period spanning precisely sixteen days. Without further delay, we slipped deep into each other’s brains. We carved away at language until it was bare skin, and even less than that but became the connective tissue of our spirits. Segues disappeared. While the world waded on beaches, conscious of their own propriety, careful to never slip in above waist-deep, we dove from cliffs into the same ocean. By February, we approached a cliff I’d never braved.
“I fear it, Tabitha.”
“You and I fear solitude more,” she answered.
“Solitude? I don’t feel solitary.”
She waited. I gave my ready defense.
“Anyway, sex is too strange.”
“What?”
“I could never share my insides, never attempt it. My womb is the temple where I dream. I could dream in secrecy forever.”
“You want to protect yourself from pain. That’s different.”
A chasm opened between us. I balked.
“Well, I haven’t thought of a way to share it without awful, heavy noises. I don’t understand the sounds. Where do they come from?”
“I don’t know, Win, but you can’t keep you for yourself. And ‘it’ doesn’t live in your lungs or between your legs.” She set her jaw and retreated inside herself. A second later, she exhaled.
“Without light and air, whatever you’re trying to protect will only die."
I mutely considered her. She challenged me in equal silence. I felt in that moment that I would remain unknown and had in fact been alone for all time. Tabitha and I had bathed in one another’s emotions, and we had spoken with nuanced subtle gazes, but even she could not prove me scientifically. I thought alone; I was enclosed. I maintained my vow to abstain from the heavy noises and empty chatter, but more than ever I groaned from my inner recesses. I was left drifting in an ocean beyond my comprehension. In folly and faith, I had run to her on deep waters whose surfaces drew me out far. Now I couldn’t see the shore for sinking.
___________________________________

There you have it. A small bit of one story I have loved well.
I'm not done loving it yet, either.

B.

The Dream Begins to Unravel

What is the Solomon's Portico of the U.S.A.?
The white house?

In Acts we find that
"They were all together in Solomon's Portico. None of the rest dared to join them, but the people held them in high esteem. Yet more than ever believers were added to the Lord, great numbers of both men and women, so that they even carried out the sick into the streets, and laid them on cots and mats, in order that Peter's shadow might fall on some of them as he came by."

The people had such faith in this way early Christians cared for the sick and hurting that they readily sought it out for themselves. What is really crazy is that you see these Christians caring for the oppressed in what would have been the Pentagon or Whitehouse of today.

Then, as Acts 5 continues, you see that the Christians are even arrested for living what the Sadducees call "this life." The life of dying every day to the cross over man leads to prison time, it leads to radical love. But this isn't your run-of-the mill revolutionary sect, this Christianity.

"If this or this undertaking is of human origin, it will fail; but if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow them-- in that case you may even be found fighting against God!" --Gamaliel in Acts 5

What is nuts is that the authorities try to shut down this group of peaceful, passionately-loving healers for being law breakers. Yet instead of being a testament to the faithful unyielding nature of the law, the arrest and consequent liberation of the Christians from prison was amidst the time when "more than ever believers were added to the Lord." As Peter says, "We must obey God rather than any human authority."

Where am I even going with this? Basically I am beginning to see that a life lived toward God, a life lived to the fullest looks revolutionary and it looks risky, but it looks so appealing in its love and compassion.

Compassion is our destiny.

Alive Again

I realize that in the past few weeks, I have felt life and felt it in abundance.
I am so excited for coming days.
And even more excitingly, I am excited for today.

How often do we live life with hesitation and regrets? I live it that way too often. No more, I say!

No more hesitation, no more regrets.

No more prioritizing money over God. No more prioritizing self-pity over healing. No more prioritizing a masturbatory lifestyle over a compassionate life.
I am changing.

Changing from believer
to follower.

Bumble #2

Phillipians 2:3 says, "do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves."
Well, elitism pretty much goes out the window with this one.

Without my sense of entitlement, who am I?

No one deserves to wash my feet. I deserve to wash everyone's.

Still In This World

Conflicted: laughter and tears.
Conflicted: relaxation and tension.
Conflicted: who I am becoming and who I still have yet to leave behind.

In the past semester, something has changed. I'm simultaneously losing and finding my identity. For the first time, I feel the spark of a connection with my community. I wonder; I am the only one?

It's not re-invention. It's rediscovery. I was always this way, but I had to tease it out. Something, or rather, someone had to tease it out. God. Friends. Family.

I'm in for some real relaxation. Enough tension.

Peace.

Bumble #1

What more is a callus than a self-inflicted hardening of all of one's former shells?