Pain and beauty, mix and shake well. Add some water now and then.

I don't know if I have anything to say, but I have a lot of things I should be doing elsewhere. So here I am. Besides, it's been a week, or two...or an entire month that feels like it was squished into a week...anyway. I've been holding onto, sifting through, and carrying around this idea for a bit. Even so, it comes a bit unmannered and clumsy.

There is this terrible relationship between beauty and vulnerability. You cannot separate them. Beauty is always in danger...and there are so few champions. Too many pretend to be protectors and use beauty selfishly until it is destroyed or otherwise devalued. Too many just don't recognize it or don't know how to respond.

From a woman's perspective (and that is what I have), it's tricky at best. The extremes are not realizing that you have beauty all your own... or hating it as a weakness. It is more common, or at least, more accepted and addressed, to not realize that you, having beauty, are really beautiful. I am not going to get into the dichotomy of inner and outer beauty because I cannot stand to run the gauntlet of cliches. Suffice it to say that the one causes the other. Enough has already been written past that.

In fact, too many things are being said. There is a trend where guys are finally getting the guts to tell girls that they are pretty, beautiful etc. And it's good. There are so many girls who need to hear that...but actions have got to follow or the same problems will persist, and in many ways worsen. Truth spoken, but not lived is tainted and a most vile poison because it teaches us to mistrust our foundations.

It is imperative that it cost nothing to know the truth, the truth that you are beautiful. And it is true at a depth that lies cannot touch, only cover and blur. It is true the way only a few things are because it is true without exception or effort.

Stop telling me I'm pretty...show me. Because nothing I have seen in this day and age can be trusted and the lies get louder each day. But maybe, if I find myself face to face with it, I can finally know. And it is not as if this is my battle. It is the battle of so many people around me... so it is our battle. And it is not just for women because we will never make it if we are left to ourselves. Nor is it in any way all hanging on the men. We need our women to be women and our men to be men... even if we don't always know what that means or can't quite define it because of the disasters of oversimplification.

Really, what I think I am trying to say is that I am tired of receiving compliments that I cannot feel. And maybe this is arrogance, but I keep hoping that I wont always feel like I have to guard myself because no one else is going to and beauty is inseparable from vulnerability. I'm not sure if I've communicated this idea very well...but I needed to put it out there regardless.

mild red

When I write about you

I will remember

your blackberries and roses,

your bridges and dog walkers

everywhere.

And everywhere filled with

your green.

Even the tree trunks have a layer,

and I am sure

that, if we dug deep enough,

your roots would proudly be so as well.

You are proud of everything you hold.

Proud of all that diversity

Proud of your high class

--your art and coffee and many activists--

proud of your low class

--your homeless and drugs and aired secrets--

proud of how they combine,

proud, even, of your shame.

But I love you

because you are home;

and you showed me

how to love even contradictory things.

forgiveness is a funny thing

Regardless of religion, forgiveness is an important part of being a healthy human being. People weren't made to store up life times of hurt and offense. We can survive such horrors, but the living afterwards can only be called life if we leave the survivor's camps and build something new. I could never accept a religion that ignored the need for forgiveness. We hurt people. We do it more often than we ever like, and it is not all their fault or just poor circumstance. We are going to need forgiveness. And so are they.

It is always different in practice than in theory largely, I think, because we talk about forgiveness so cheaply like it is a makeup we can apply in the morning if we have a zit making an appearance. It is a choice that goes so much deeper. And more.

Because it is rarely enough to make the choice once.

Even once per incident. At some point, somebody is going to hurt you, probably for a long period of time and you won't get to know when to expect it to be over. It is perhaps the hardest thing I have ever attempted to do, this forgiveness thing, when someone is still hurting you to keep forgiving them every day... every time you are reminded of that something. Too often I have acted like things should not hurt if forgiveness is there. I wish.

It is not an anesthetic. It is accepted vulnerability couched in frequently misunderstood strength. It makes no sense. I guess it is the endurance test of love. Can it really endure all things? How patient can it be? There is a balance because forgiveness is not devaluing yourself and it is not ignoring wrongs. I think it is freedom.

To heal.

To go forward.

To live.

And living hurts. It requires the full spectrum of emotions because there will be terrible-no-good-very-bad-days and really freaking fantastic ones. Only human beings get to live through both, and you cannot shut out the bad. It's not a privilege you get unless you trade in your freedoms. That is what impresses me about Christianity. To see Jesus on the cross, barely alive, dying someone else's death...and still breathing forgiveness...even though they aren't even done with him yet. He doesn't wait. And it doesn't make any sense. But I think this is because I cannot yet comprehend a love like that.