deepest green

We all smile and pretend to know of something that has lasted forever. I do not know why because it makes us all liars and we know it. But we want to believe so very badly,

so we do.

Against the rules, against logic, against experience, against every guiding agent we have ever known, we believe. It is more foolish than a mere fool's hope

and we know that too.

But we have resigned ourselves to this because we do not want to live in a world without some sort of enduring reality. And we suspect, that we alone have nothing that will last. We cannot stand being alone. Not one, but two jealous eyes, fall upon everything and everyone who might have it better than us. We feel returned jealousy and become terrified that they will find out everything we have has been lost.

This is the fear that is becoming us.

It leaves so little room for anything else. We are equals who sell our equality for insecurity.

But our world is not big enough, or did you not hear? There is so much out there that does not make sense, and it does not speak a word about our value. It is beautiful and not. It is a lot of things, especially more than any of us.

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.

ruby

I have long berated emotions for being inefficient, and for nearly that same amount of time I have wondered what real purpose they serve. They are a large part of why I do not really believe in macro-evolution. Emotions do not aid the survival of the fittest mentality, stereotypical or not. They are deceptive and impractical more often than not.

It was easy to come up with half-answers that were never satisfying, but were enough to pacify. Things like, "they are what make us human" or "to keep us from being fake" and other explanations were in no way false...but they did not seem to be solid defense.

Maybe what I have found will only pacify any other person, but it is the answer I have found satisfaction in. Emotions force us to need the people around us. They make life about more than just getting by on our own and totally destroy the lone ranger. People are not made to be alone and we feel it more than the most perfect empirical science. This life thing, whatever else it is, is dependent on other people. We can take on other people's pain in a way that is uniquely human, even if we do not know them.

Feeling is what binds us together. And it is pain and happiness...and both of those in strange and unexpected mixtures. We need people to help us heal. We need people we can trust to help us be who we were made to...It does not work any other way. There are no exceptions or loopholes. It is horrible and dangerous and painfully clumsy work because none of us know what we are doing. More than that, we wont know what we are doing until we have done it, probably wrong, at least once. All of us clueless people trying to make sense of what we have been given. But it is poetry, or art, or music...and we cannot stop to consider our audience or we will never finish. Because if we lose ourselves to the rules of beauty that other people make we will never wade through those tears or walk deep enough into unknown darkness to feel the weight of the worth of what we are making.

Quite simply, we are making ourselves a life.

summer sky blue

Home smells like ponderosa

baked into tall grasses

with all the warmth

of a summer oven.

And it looks like wildflowers

--flax and lupine,

paintbrush and snap dragons--

scattered everywhere

with strangely majestic thistles in between.

Did you know

that thistles smell

milky and sweet and musty

all at the same time?

And home has so many sounds:

The rumbling of dirt roads

and dashing of deer and grasshoppers.

Crickets and wind and old things

that are too tired, or too loved, to wear out.

I cannot forget this giant theater sky

with its many, many moods

playing and yelling

and whispering so many secrets.

And it does not matter

how long I am away.
I will always have sap

folded into my skin,

baked into my hands.

I may have many more homes

but I will never really wash

this dust from my hair

or this sky from my eyes.

yellow

I have reached a point in my belief in Christianity and faith in God where I have to admit that it's not what it used to be. I still believe the same core things, but the externals are changing, well, have been changing for awhile. I am only now able to attempt to see what they might become. I was brought up on a hot and contradictory mixture of fiery pentecostalism and timid reformed presbyterianism (if I may coin the terms) and both of those juxtaposed the deep New Age of my father's house. It wasn't long before the passion of the pentecostals became my own. I wanted to be radical. I thought I could change the world if I tried hard enough, was righteous enough or something.

High standards are my specialty. I have grace enough for everyone but me. But you can't make a life out of it and that has become my test: Can I build a life on this? Unreachable goals will either be abandoned or else they will destroy some part of you. I had to leave them eventually. I needed healing and I would not find it by always striving for the impossible. I do not want to be a radical Christian anymore. While that sounds horrible, I will stand by it. It is the radicals that my coworkers abhor for their arrogance, hypocrisy, and other flaws. There must be a better way. Can quiet lives shout? How radical was Jesus?

He paid his taxes, went to weddings, drank wine and ate dinner with sinners, he told stories... Yes, he cleansed the temple, calmed storms, and put the pharisees in their place. Still, his life seems markedly different than our modern zealots. In our effort to make him relevant, to communicate how extraordinary he was, we have made him something he never really was and still is not. And I find that comforting because I can't be that anymore. I can love God. I can love people. When I think about it, those were the two greatest commandments anyway. Those are strong enough to build my life on.

I don't want to change the world. There are 6 billion people on this planet and I wont meet them all. Besides, the Bible doesn't preach revolution and revival the way many of today's churches do. It prophesies hardship and a worsening of times...animosity for God and everything, everyone, associated. And we will be known by our love, because that is something that can't be faked, wont go out of style, and will always be needed. Most people don't need to know that they aren't perfect (even when they act like it), they need to know that they are loved.