Celebrate With Me!

won't you celebrate with me

what i have shaped into

a kind of life? 

i had no model.

born in babylon

both nonwhite and woman

what did i see to be except myself?

i made it up

here on this bridge between

starshine and clay,

my one hand holding tight

my other hand; come celebrate

with me that everyday

something has tried to kill me

and has failed.

"And. Has. Failed." 

That's the important part. 

Lord have mercy on me, a sinner, but not a failure. 

Relevant Reading

Lucille Clifton

Poems by Lucille Clifton

I Iz Vewwy Scawwy Pony

What is up, buttercups? It's been a couple years. Buuuut, in my defense, there's been fascists and nahtzee yt supremacists, insurrectionists, and a straight up panini-press* so I've been kind of busy. 

I've been doing some thinking lately. Wait, back up...I did something completely UNthinkingly that forced me to think. After, of course, I got over the sheer rage that was caused by what I had done by my own free will to myself.

....pardon me while I digress a bit, my brain is wonky from staring at too many Jira tickets....

Isn't it amazing how that works? That I can do something by choice and under no obligation or duress that makes me fly into a rage inside my own head? Like there is no one here to blame but myself for this. I worry about me sometimes...

Anyway...where was I? Oh yes...I did something to myself that made me think about how people are. So if you know me or have read my blog you know my story so I'm not going to re-hash all that. It's over out and done with and even though there are still some splinters that pop up now and then because that's the nature of the beast we call a brain.

Even if you decide to inflict said splinter on yourself. 

Moving forward.

I am a villain. The Bad Guy wearing the Black Hat and twirling my mustache, come to rain misery and despair over the blameless denizens of the land who are just trying to live their lives. I bathe in the blood of innocent kittens. I eat puppies. I am just this side of evil incarnate. I am consciously manipulative. I am a liar and a ringleader of flying liars bent on spreading lies. 

I am a hypocrite. 

I AM A MONSTER

HA! I wish I could pull all that off. But yeah, I'm the bad guy.

And, after some initial anger (read as RAGE, and cruel thoughts, and disbelief, and a whole heckuvalotta "HOW DARE YOU"s) you know what? I accepted it. I'm the Bad Guy in that story. I made decisions that affected the story of that person's life in ways they didn't like. It doesn't matter WHY I did it, what those decisions were in response to. In that person's story, I am the Bad Guy complete with  Black Hat ™. Possibly even an eye patch. I quite like the eye patch.

We are all The Bad Guy in someone's story, though. We craft for ourselves a reality centered on ourselves based on of the way we see the things we live through from day-to-day, moment-to-moment. Their memories are not mine. Their feelings are not mine. Their perspective is not mine. My perspective is not theirs. And they are no more "wrong" in their perception than I am in mine because frankly I cannot change how I am seen from someone else's point of view. In someone else's memory of an event.

And that is.

It.

Just.

Is.

Elsewhere I wrote:

This story is going to be different from whichever perspective you choose to look at it. Only by seeing all sides of a story can the truth ever be understood. This is the truth I lived with. I don't coat it with honey for anyone, least of all myself. Having more of it inflicted on me is nothing I am willing to bear any longer.

My journey is not about vengeance nor is it about seeking retribution. My journey is about me working out my salvation with fear and trembling (Philippians 2:12). So look to your own salvation and I'll see to mine.

In one of my favorite books, Vigilant by James Alan Gardner, there is an organization that is dedicated to seeking out corruption in the government. Their motto is LIVE IN THE REAL AND NAME THE LIES. I aspire, however waveringly, however faultily, to live by it. I need to embroider it on a pillow.

Live in the Real - I am the Good Guy in my story. I may be the Bad Guy in the stories of those I touch.

Name the Lies - I am ALWAYS the Good Guy (or at least neutral) in the stories of those I touch.

Name the Lies - I need to change myself so that I show up as the Good Guy at all times in everyone's story.

Live in the Real - My actions are not always Divine, Generous, and Heroic. My actions are not always Demonic, Self-serving and Evil. And neither are anyone else's. 

Remember : This story is going to be different from whichever perspective you choose to look at it. 

We have all sinned. We have all played a the bad guy's role in someone's story. We have all hurt and been hurt. We have all treated each other, and ourselves, as things. And that, according to Granny Weatherwax, is where sin begins, when you treat people as things.

"In this life, many things happen in which we play a shameful part. Those of us who are strong forgive ourselves and go om. The weak wallow in they shame and allow it to devour them. There is no one of us who is without sin, child. There ought to be some comfort in that." ~ The Duchess, Through a Glass Darkly

Weirdly, it is kind of freeing to realize I am not always the Good Guy. It is equally freeing to realize I am not always the Bad Guy. 

Both truths exist. They are BOTH true.

They are both/and.

Both. And.

Lord have mercy on me, a sinner.

Relevant Reading 

We are all villains in someone else's story

You Will Always be a Villain in Someone Else's Story

Vigilant

Through A Glass Darkly

Romans 3:10-26

More of Granny Weatherwax's Wisdom

*Panini Press and any other multisylabbic word beginning with the letter "P" has been used to refer to the SARS-COV2/COVID-19 pandemic that has afflicted the world and caused several million yt folks to lose their cot-danged minds but that is a soap box for elsewhere

Do Justice, Love Kindness, Walk Humbly

He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to DO JUSTICE, AND TO LOVE KINDNESS, AND TO WALK HUMBLY WITH YOUR GOD? ~ Micah 6:8

I get a little unhappy with folks who think they get to dictate who deserves justice and kindness in a place where so many have been deprived of it in favor of others who meet a certain criteria.

It is not a good thing (or a God thing) to show favoritism. It is in fact a sin to do so (see James 2:9). The point is to open the table to ALL. When the Master said to His servant, “Go out into the roads and lanes, and compel people to come in, so that my house may be filled," he did not tell the servant to inquire about their personal lives, pedigrees, gender, or skin color first. He said "Tell them to come in that my house may be full."

Seems to me that we should actually heed this instead of building fences, complaining about someone coming to take "muh guns," deciding certain people have mental problems because of who they choose to be, and denying basic decency to children and refugees.

Don't argue with me about it. I didn't say it.

Lord have mercy on me a sinner.

Relevant Reading
Micah 6:8
James 2:8-10
Luke 14:16-24

Can we extend forgiveness to black men?

I've been thinking about this a lot since reading about all these folks wanting to drag Michael Vick (again). I saw the articles about the petition and was like, "Didn't he go to jail for that already? What's this about?" I'm no huge football fan or anything but certain things stick out, you know?

So I totally get the disgust. Vick raised dogs to fight and encouraged others to do the same by running a dog fighting ring. That's horrible.

That was kind of a big deal. TWELVE YEARS AGO. In TWO THOUSAND AND SEVEN.

I just don't understand!

And it's not like he, oh I dunno...walked into a man's own home and blew him away or anything.

Yet for some reason the latter is granted forgiveness (and a hug, no less) before the former. Even though Vick has served time, done multiple speaking tours about the evils of dog fighting, and donated money to every animal charity under the sun. And, frankly, even though I love me some dogs and think dog fighting is horrific, I kind of think the latter is WAY worse than the former. Just my humble yet accurate opinion.

But certain folk will jump all over a bandwagon to forgive, or at least give a pass to, certain people for just about anything while at the same time holding certain others hostage to their past foibles. Never mind that they have paid for their crime, were very young, didn't know what they were doing, blah blah blah.

Now don't get me wrong. I do actually know the reason why. It's the same thing that causes folk, after a black person has been shot or assaulted by a white policeman or had the cops called on them for living theor lives, to say things like:

• what were they doing to make them shoot/call the police
• why didn't they just do as they were told/not do that
• why were they wearing that/living their life
• why were they black in a public space

It's maddening.

As the article says, no one is owed forgiveness. That is not a thing. It's the partiality I question. The blatant favoritism. Good Lord don't black men deserve the same consideration of others to rectify the situation, pay their dues, and go on? I'm not sure, but I think St. Paul said something about that and in the words of the article,

"So think of forgiveness this way-you’re able to do it with your uncle that says homophobic and racist things every Thanksgiving. You’re able to do it with the boyfriend who holds your head under the sheets and farts. You’re able to do it when a girl buries a baby alive or a woman comes into the home of a man and shoots him dead. Figure out what internally is causing you to hold back on allowing Black men to grow from their mistakes, not be caught up in their past, and live their lives."

Lord have mercy on me a sinner.

#bloginstead #3daysinthewilds

Relevant Reading
It’s Time We Talk About America’s Inability To Forgive Black Men
2 Corinthians 2:5-11
Michael Vick Petition
Bad Newz Kennels dog fighting investigation

Sing Soft Kitty To Me

I don't feel so good.

GERMS SUCK.

Runny noses SUCK. Stuffy noses SUCK. One nostril stuffy while other nostril flows like the freakin' Colorado River SUCKS. Coughing up a lung and waking up in the middle of the night SUCKS (although actually "coughing up a lung" is a thing and can be fatal, don't do it). Sore throats SUCK.

Hm. I sense a pattern of STRAIGHT UP SUCKERY.

Where's my tissue?

#bloginstead #3daysinthewilds

Relevant Reading
Soft Kitty

Day the First of #bloginstead

"Who's got a blog and wants to try an experiment with me?
Here's what I have in mind. Round up as many people with blogs as I can, and have us all follow each other's blogs. Then, for 3 days, we communicate via our blogs INSTEAD of social media. We post on our blogs the way we'd post here - informal, chatty, what's up at the moment, stream of consciousness, whatever it is that constitutes a conversation for you at the time. Everyone in the group reads everyone in the group, and we visit by commenting on posts. Anyone who doesn't have a blog but wants to join in commenting is very welcome. After 3 days, we decide what, if anything, we've discovered."
~ Melinda Johnson

So I decided to participate in a thing. Look at me. Joining.

I have a lot of opinions and thoughts about things, but for a while now I've just let them fly from the id. To quote Nomad (let the reader understand), "That unit is defective. It's thinking is chaotic. Absorbing it unsettled me...A mass of conflicting impulses." I'm thinking and feeling so many things at once sometimes that it is hard to put them into any kind of order so EVERYTHING becomes stream of consciousness.

It's unsettling.

Do not like.

So I'm going to do that here for the next three days (see date stamp).

For anyone following me for this, beware. I can get rather...salty. And prolific.

#bloginstead #3daysinthewilds

Relevant Reading 
Id (Britannica article)
Nomad on Women
List of Bloggers to Follow

I See Willfully Ignorant People

Once upon a time, the world was very small. People could claim things about other people that were not true and folks were less likely to check to see that these things were true because it was too much effort or something to read a book and too scary to meet people who were different from them. Things like:

• All Black people riot© and are violent and stupid
• All "American Indians" are drunks
• All Muslims are inherently evil
• All Africans are poor and starving
• All Asian women are demure, delicate flowers and like being ordered around
• All Asian men are mathematical geniuses
• All Black women are loud, angry, welfare hoes
• All Black men are gang-bangers
• All Mexicans are drug dealers
• All people who speak Spanish are Mexican
• All British people are stiff, polite, and upstanding
• All Scientists are lying about their research to get more money
• All Teachers get a three month paid vacation
• Etc, etc, etc, ad infinitum, ad nauseam

Now, however, we have the ability to learn otherwise. We have this thing called the internet and we have Google and we have televisions and we still have books but now we have books that are narrated to you.

It's amazing the sheer number of ways and means we have the ability to get accurate information from...

And yet don't.

It's very sad. It's not supposed to be this way.

"When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” He said to him, “’You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”

Please note the Commandment includes using your mind and is, in Christ's own words, "the greatest and first commandment."

Use your brain. Or as my mother would say, "Use your head for something besides a hat-rack."

It's a commandment from the Lord.

Thanks just all to pieces.

Relevant Reading
Matthew 22:34-46

Lessons from Deep Space

I love Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Absolutely love it. For me, DS9 was the best of the Star Trek franchise in terms of acting, writing, and just telling a story. It gripped me time and again with every episode, even the silly ones. But one thing stayed with me even now, 25 years on, and that was the very first episode, Emissary. In it, the new commander of The Space Station Formerly Known as Terok Nor, Sisko, first encounters the wormhole aliens--entities that exist inside a stable wormhole that links the Alpha and Delta Quadrants of the Milky way.

The wormhole entities exist in a timeless state and do not uderstand corporeal beings who live “in time” so Sisko, in tried and true “seek out new life” manner, tries to explain it to them. However, the wormhole aliens, who are accessing his personal memories so they can interact with him by taking the form of people he knows -- his son, Jake, his wife, Jennifer, Captain Jean-Luc Picard-- can’t grasp the idea that humans (and other corporeal beings) live in a linear timeline because Sisko keeps returning to the scene of his wife’s death at the Battle of Wolf 359. He tries again and again but keeps returning in his memories to where he lost his wife. Accordingly, the  entities ask him, “Well if that is true, that you do live linearly, why do you exist in this place? At this time? In this moment?”

And that is when Sisko realizes that he does live, move, and have his being in that place, that time, that moment. Everything he does, every choice he makes arises from that time when he was so profoundly traumatised. He can't leave it. No, he won't leave it. He chooses to remain in that space with those fires and those alarms, and the horror of watching his wife die and being able to do nothing about it.

Understanding dawns and he realizes he is choosing to exist in that place. He is choosing to exist in that place. He is choosing to exist in that place.

It is not linear.

It is not growth.

It is his choice.

Spoiler alert: At the end of the episode, Sisko is beginning to make different choices. He begins to choose to live in a different place. The trauma is still there. The grief is not gone but he no longer chooses to exist, to live, move, and have his being in that place. He begins to heal.

I think we all have those places in ourselves. Individually and corporately. We get profoundly hurt and the trauma is real. It's Ground Zero. Our life looks like Mt. St. Helens blew up and took the very earth from beneath our feet, destroying and ruining the entire landscape of our being.

Borrowed from Del Tackett via Google Images

My Mt. St. Helens blew in my living room about a month ago, 2007. And I lived in that devastation there for YEARS. It was comfortable there, with all that nice sticky mud around me, conforming to my emotions but there was always something (someONE) telling me this is not how you are supposed to live. There isn't supposed to be ash and rubble everywhere ALL the time. The still pools of your spirit aren't supposed to be choked with regret, the rivers of your soul should flow, not continue to stagnate with death and destruction.

I had to choose to do the work that is necessary to NOT exist there.

It was hard work. It involved facing what I did, did not do, was not able to do as well as what was done to me.

It involved forgiveness of others and of myself.

It involved letting it go and letting it be.

It involved recognizing that the only person keeping me in that place, that time, that moment...Is me.

It's not easy to recognize that you are choosing to live in a place of destruction if you've lived there a long time. Humanity is successful because humanity is adaptable. We can adjust to live in just about any environment, including a toxic one of our own making. Defenses are erected, lookouts are posted for any sign of offense, real or imagined, and we settle into our bunker, our muddy foxhole and decide this is how it should be and damn the person who says, "Would you like me to help you move these dead trees and clear out this mud?"

It becomes the place where we exist. Where we live move and have our being. We like our dead trees and mud.

Letting go of that is one of the hardest things I ever did but the first step, saying to myself, "No I do not want to live here. I want to live a linear life. I want to move" was the best one. I revisit these places but on a vertical spiral. The spiral goes up--because I choose for it to go up. When I see the broken places from a higher place, I can see where I need to ask for help to fix them: that river is choked with mud, these busted trees are piled too high for light to shine on the saplings. And then the river flows and the trees grow and I go up again. When I see that space again I see something else that needs adjusting so that light can shine and water can move.

But it has to be a choice I make. No one can do it for me.

Relevant Reading
ST: DS9 - Emissary
ST: DS9 - Time is Linear, Pt2 (Youtube video)
You Choose to Exist Here: Reliving Deep Space Nine
Acts 17:26-28
How the Truth Sets You Free

Edited to add: I think the entire country is living in a place of trauma. I won't speculate on when the trauma occurred but what is happening now is a symptom of so many years of ignoring a huge festering wound where, whether we recognize it or not, we still collectively, exist--live, move, and have our being.

We need to move, collectively, to a better space or else nothing we do will change. We need to choose to not exist as a traumatized people.

Let It Be

When I find myself in times of trouble Mother Mary comes to me

Speaking words of wisdom

Let it be

And in my hour of darkness She is standing right in front of me

Speaking words of wisdom

Let it be...

(Beatles, Let It Be)

I read an article recently that spoke much to me about some of the "knots" I've been asking the Theotokos to untie for me.  Basically, let it be.

NOT "let it go". There is a difference. My life is not a Disney movie. I am no princess. Queen, maybe...but I digress.

Let it be. Let it be truth and joy and wisdom that I portray. Let it be mercy and grace. Exist in the way I know that God has told me to exist and things will be, in spite of me.

"Remember then from what you have fallen;
repent, and do the works you did at first."
~ Revelation 2:5 

"Remember God. Say your prayers. Go to church.

Forgive your brother. Obey the commandments."

~ Fr Thomas Hopko 

Why is this so freakin' hard?

Because I am a sinner. May God have mercy on me.

Relevant Reading
Revelation 2:2-7
"55 Maxims of the Christian Life" ~ Fr Thomas Hopko
How Do We Live in This World
Do All the Things

An Untied Knot in My Heart

The Theotokos Undoer of Knots

Virgin mother, Mary, you untie the knots, with the grace and power of your intercession, take my supplications to your Son Jesus, my God, my Savior and my only Lord, and dissolve and unleash the knot that makes me suffer so much. I hope and trust you, sweet and generous mother. Holy Theotokos, please untie my knots, keep me, guide me, protect me, be my refuge, enlighten me, give me strength  and grant me with immense faith I ask you. 

I asked the Theotokos for a knot to be untied. She spoke to me in a way I could understand and led me to a shoulder who will understand my need and teach me to pray for it.

Thank you Holy Mother.

Pray to God for me, a sinner.