I Am

In that space between what rises within you like a white-capped crest of confusion,

flotsam & jetsam of 
old habits and tired stories
shouldn'ts and don'ts
fears and anxieties
rejections and losses
punishments and judgements
practiced answers and painful silences,

and

a moment that invites your participation,

allow your breath to expand the spacetime around you, within you.

Find more room.

Linger longer in your discomfort until the swell settles and the waters calm.

Ask for another moment, untimed, unbounded.

Stand at the precipice of that chasm you ache to close quickly and sharply the same way you have closed it ten thousand times.

Just this once, look out across the void.
Do not be afraid...
or do be afraid, and hold your gaze anyway.
You are about to claim your magic.

• • •

Say, with conviction, "I AM": the spell that will part the sea of shame distancing you from your inner truth...

Step into the wet sands of self-exploration, perhaps unfamiliar footing, with trust that the drowning waters will hold as you look inward...

Walk in the cadence of a mantra: "I am real; I am holy; I am sacred; I am enough" (just as I AM)...

Listen curiously to what you feel, what you wonder, what you fear, what you love, what you need - and, like shells scooped from your feet, sift through to keep the ones that are treasures and toss the ones that are jagged blades...

See in the distance a welcoming shore, organic and verdant: the edge of your soul, lush and patient, hospitable and waiting...

Land on firm stones and soft soil, the roots and fruits of your wild, free Being:

a sure foundation for your thought, speech, and action,

a home that shelters you and hosts myriad guests of Thought and Emotion with grace, discernment, and reverence,

a place to explore each new day of your life.

• • •

Open your eyes to this moment again.

You are held by yourself.

Speak. Move. Be.

Let it go.

Give thanks.

Embark on the next, new moment.

Parts of the Whole

"Mommy's eye. Ronin's ear. Mommy's nose. Ronin's mouth." We play our new game while he nurses just as he has since birth, reclining near my heart, meeting my gaze in effortless, intimate trust.

Suddenly, gently, he pulls away and, unperturbed but clear, signs "more." He's thirsty. After he has just "nursed." I know what is happening, as it happened when Ronin was the wee one growing within me and Oak was the child weaning: my body's wisdom is redirecting resources to the new life emerging.

A sip from a cup, and Ronin is satisfied. But I can't quench the pang of mourning the loss of this precious relationship brings.

Pregnancy nausea and fear for the planet have been my constant companions today. I am learning to trust the same truths in both my immediate, viscerally physical reality of tending and creating children and in my movement through the wider world:

I am giving what I can.
What I have nourished to the best of my ability, I can release with trust and gratitude.
What I am tending may be small, even imperceptible, but requires my energy and deserves my focus.
It is okay to let things move on.
It is okay to stay right where I am.
It is okay to believe that slow work is worthy.
It is okay to treasure what is good.
It is okay to despair at what isn't.
It is okay to be as needed, and I can decide what is needed.

I sometimes wonder what I'm doing, having another child in tumultuous and unpredictable times, as so much dangles from a precipice. But then I watch my silly-giggly children slow-dance-embrace and pull each other across the floor in uproarious fun at just being who and as they are. I feel a swell of nausea, both uncomfortable and reassuring, telling my body and soul that Life prevails. I feel tears well as I sit next to my beloved sister and friend, in my comfortable home, surrounded in rain and light.

I have had to surrender what I thought was required of me just to stay alive. What I have known in that void is the rapturous disintegration of the non-essential. I've sat in that liminal space, being not one person, not two people, looking in the eyes of eternity. This is where I can return in any moment I choose, remembering that nothing is ever lost, that hope is a practice of survival, that my power is my authentic participation in the unfolding of everything.

Eyes. Ears. Nose.
Mine. Yours.
Parts. Inputs.
To the Whole.

What we truly thirst for is quenchable not by milk or water, but by the secure, loving trust that what we are doing together, if it is done truly together with least harm, will be enough. That our energy in any given direction will eventually expire. But that something new, in mystery, is always coming into being.

This is our dance, tipsy and terrifying and transformational. Turn, turn, turn. Hold on. Release. Let your heart spill over. Say it's enough. Stay. Surrender. Sing.

An Open Letter to My Fellow White Folks

Time for some real talk, Good White Folks.

Here's the overview: White folks, we are racist. It is dangerous to not acknowledge this. However, once we do, there is a real chance for healing, for internal reconciliation, and to make ourselves actually useful in the fight against white supremacy.

I can almost guarantee that you felt a repulsion at the thought that “we are racist.” That's because, even though you and I are racist by birthright, I would guess that you, like I, long NOT to be. We want to be good people. We want to think we're evolved and enlightened and compassionate. We want to think that we're better than our forebears or the white people marching in droves with torches. We want to think we were raised to be good people and are being good people in the world.

Please hear me: I am not saying you are not good. I am not saying you aren't trying to do the right thing. I am not saying you are intentionally trying to be racist.

I'm just stating the fact that racism is alive in you.

Since before we were born, we've been swimming in a white supremacist milieu, unconsciously internalizing a racist blueprint of the world and our understanding of self. Wittingly or not, we have been participating in and perpetuating systems of oppression that simultaneously benefit us and keep us trapped since before we were conscious. We can barely recognize this because we have been looking at everything through the lens of white supremacy since before we can remember.

Is this hard for you to believe? What I have found is that, if we tell the *absolute truth* about what comes up in our conscious and unconscious at any given moment, we can begin to more clearly see and examine the functions of white privilege and white supremacy operating in and through us.

Let me give you one example. It's an uncomfortable and painful example to talk about because it's not something we want to be true about us. Nevertheless, I have yet to meet a white person who can outrightly deny that this is their experience. Here it is:

Most (if not all) white people have had experiences of intrusive, bigoted thoughts. These intrusive thoughts may come frequently or infrequently, noticeably or imperceptibly, in a variety of contexts, but they come. They come as the fleeting, unwelcome thought, “Of course it was a black person.” They come as the fleeting assumption about someone based on skin tone, even though you are a “woke” white person. As the mental substitution of a nasty, racist word (one you would NEVER say aloud) in place of a normal descriptor. As qualifications of someone (only non-white people) by a word not relevant to the conversation. As a fleeting fear when appearances conform with racist images purported by media. As split-second decisions made based on information assumed about a person of color before you. As a thoughtless microaggression, tone policing, or racist platitude.

These intrusive, bigoted thoughts also come as the paranoia of being extra nice to the person of color in the room to prove you're a “safe” white person. As the adamant defense of yourself as an “ally.” As the broadstroke but “positive” comments about an entire people. As your paralyzing fear that keeps you silent in the face of an overt racist.

Who among us can claim that none of the above have ever happened, nor continue to happen, within us? If any of the above examples have been true for you, it doesn't make you irredeemable or evil. It makes you a human in white skin.

This is just ONE example of the ways white supremacy works within us. There are countless ways we can learn to notice and there are countless ways we have likely not yet recognized its movement through us.

Racism is alive in us. This is why it's essential to admit and claim it: when we can look it in the eye, we can acknowledge that IT IS NOT US. It is a function. We are the operator. We can reprogram. We can retrain our minds and hearts. We can work to liberate ourselves. We can get more free.

Until a few days ago, most of us in Louisville weren't aware that a particular statue in Cherokee Triangle glorified a Confederate slave owner. I cannot tell you how many times I drove by and didn't know. I didn't stop to really look. I didn't read the plaque. I simply curved around it and continued on my way. There are racist edifaces in our psyche and spirit as seemingly obvious as a huge, bronze man on a horse that have managed to blend into our mental-spiritual scenery, but that redirect our actions every day. Stopping to take a good look and being honest about what we see, within and around us, is a first step.

That's when we can begin to deconstruct the racism alive in us. We can become more conscious of when it's ME talking or when it's the WHITE SUPREMACY talking, and how the latter has harmed the former. We can better acknowledge our privilege at work and humble ourselves. We can begin to participate in the work for justice as a better accomplice to people of color…because we can more clearly see that we aren't “helping others,” but rather we are saving ourselves, thus saving humanity.

The truth is, this is the hard, slow, painful, but essential work of a lifetime. We may never finish our efforts to examine, heal, and recover our racism before we die. But every bit of honest extrication uproots this legacy for our children. It cultivates the possibility for them to separate themselves and keep themselves separated from the claws of white supremacy. It lays a more truthful foundation for solidarity. It begins to plant seeds of freedom.

White people, we may not have created the white supremacist world in which we live, but we belong to it. It's ours. Let's claim it so we can change it. Let's take responsibility so we can eradicate oppression. Let's be honest about who we are so that we can better support and accompany one another on the journey. Let's foster collective liberation so that every last one of us can become who we really are, who we want to be, in freedom.

Dawn

My children have taught 
me to wake up with the sun,
to open my eyes 
when exhaustion from a night 
of screams threatens to
keep my soul closed to the day.
I rise resentful,
sad, apathetic, afraid.
But their eyes meet mine,
brown mirrors of potential:
joy at the closeness;
delight at whispered sharings;
curiosity;
acceptance of what is now;
trust in Earth's turning.
Their hearts, hands reach, pull me up
through the clouds of doubt
toward their dawning promise.

New Moon in Leo

Trust the seed-spark that this new moon in Leo beckons from within you.
The call of this kindling has been forged by universal elements for aeons, 
germinated in the substance of your spirit, 
preserved as a treasure 
for this particular alchemical awakening through you.
Square your shoulders.
Fix your gaze by looking deeply into your own eyes.
Claim courageously, wholeheartedly, the ember you will embody in this space-time.
Feel the inner flame writhing and expanding, burning and brightening. It is yours. It is you. Inhale deeply to fan the fire.
Let a full-throated soul-roar echo your announcement to the universe:
"NOW."
🔥

Sparks

I watched the sparkling explosions reflected in my children's eyes, unblinking windows to neural networks mirroring these brilliant external combustions. One child withdraws, retreats, takes cover, continues to peer intently from a distance at the rockets flying. The other child exclaims, strains his whole body forward, and makes every effort to find a way closer to the thick of the launch site. Though the directions seem opposite, I feel from them similar stirrings: to find a means to connect, to understand, to see what is really there.

There is a python at the Louisville Zoo who is the daughter of another python at this zoo. That snake, the mother, has never been near a male, but one day the keepers found ten eggs hiding in her pen. Ten fertilized eggs. Her eggs. Parthenogenesis. The eggs hatched into ten female snakes, one of whom remains the Mother's neighboring occupant. An elderly zookeeper with a brunette perm and thick glasses told me this in a quiet tone as she held another, smaller snake in her hands. It's not too uncommon - there are many things to marvel about, she said, before a fresh flock of children gathered to touch the snake she held.

Most children I have spent enough time around have offered me evidence of clairvoyant tendencies. Some are much stronger cases than others, but the fact that I am always surprised, then doubtful, then aware of my bias against the extraordinary reminds me that, in plain sight, miracles are regularly overlooked. So I look again; I let go, and I let the astonishment catch in my throat, let it make my heart race with questions.

When the sacred terror of death's finality seizes my consciousness, I keenly feel my blood, my skull, my tight chest. I open the eyes of my eyes again, each time with a little less fear, and less certainty, of what there may be to discover.

Down

Down, lay down. Fold and refold the towel. Lay it once more on his brow, cool side down, and tuck part over his ear. Shhhh, I'm here. Settle down with the baby in the crook of your other arm while you wait for the next cry out from a dream-terror; feel the dryness of your eyes and the ache of your mind for sleep. Even though you're thirsty, ease the toddler down to your breast and feel the milk let down.

Down, under the night, are stirrings everywhere. Migrants shift through hot sands ingrained as a barren inner and outer landscape: empty promise, vessel to another land flowing, in which they float next to Death. Babes tuck one another into cardboard boxes, nibbling stolen food, giggling at stories under the stars' canopy and resiliently surviving against the odds of aeons. Hidden lovers trace each other's bodies beneath​ the cover of darkness, sacred and secret in their surrender to the transcendent alchemy of togetherness, each point of contact redefining all former notions of what is possible in Union.

Down, under the mystery, is something simple about being human: to live and keep living, with ourselves and each other, and create something more wonderful than we have known. There is pain and ecstasy and horror and amazement that moves around and through us and what we have made. There are personal and collective fears, hopes, trials, and triumphs that can define us. There are patterns of oppression and systems of subjugation that terrorize peoples, hegemonies and hierarchies that imprison generations. There are movements and revolutions that push, revolve, evolve. There are breakthroughs in humans and species that leave strewn trails of starstuff from which their descendants can build.

Down, down. Let your soul sink once more. Rise again and again when you're needed. Trust your weariness to tell you when to let it be or when to lend a hand. Know that your suffering is always understandable and never isolated. Believe that the small and the big work are the same. The key to keep going is to rest but not sleep, to work but not break, to focus and vision. The energetic undercurrent channels below it all. Feel it beneath you, suspending you. Dip down.

Simple Lessons for Equilibrium

Let go of the idea of balance.
Instead, step into the possibility of paying attention.

Breathe. Listen to your body.
Pause. Notice who else is with you.

Trust what you need. Tend to yourself. Tell others what you need. Receive it gratefully.

Ask others what they need. Trust their needs. Tend to them. Give with gratitude.

Listen to someone you have never heard before.
Trust their truth.
Let it reshape your life.

Together, create something life-giving.
Take the next right step.

Forget tallying up the score. Forget shoulds and shames. Forget the lie that you could not be enough. Forget ambition.

Look back with gratitude and surrender.
Look forward with gratitude and surrender.
Look around with gratitude and surrender.

Triduum

The Norway Spruce canopied me and the child at my chest on the grounds of Yew Dell Gardens. Morning light filtered through the spiny branches yielding young cones resembling pink berries. I touched and tasted the sap, more floral and fragrant than sweet. I breathed the air, not yet heavy with the day's heat, but warm and waking. I walked across the soft bed of fallen needles, a nest of comfort, under the shadows of ancient ones whispering their secrets of longevity.

I read later that this ancient tree belongs to the species of the oldest single living tree and was the first gymnosperm genome to be sequenced by scientists. Its evergreen limbs form protective coating on their spiky leaves that protects chlorophyll - alchemical component that transforms light into nourishment - and retains precious water - essential life element. The variation is great between individuals but each tree features the hardy characteristics that keep its boundaries to outside harshness​ impermeable. External storms inform the plant's growth, touch the bark and the roots, but do not penetrate the energetic center. Thus, the trees continue to flourish, aeons old.

Illness wore down our whole family, forcing an abbreviated quarantine. Quarantine: forty days, period of transformation. While we were only sick for a week, the time began simultaneously with a sabbatical from social media. The last twelve days of Lent invited the deep healing of body and spirit, painful and purging and profound. The upper room of our home became the Hermitage.

Solitude: foundational fodder for an intentional life, but the cave I have come to fear to enter. Anxiety meets me there, existential dread, and terror for my children, all children. But I came back to my breath, again and again, and the beating of my heart. Everything alive is breathing. Everything alive is beating. Everything dead is to be held with the awareness that something new, somewhere, will be born from it. I'm connected to all of it. I'm dying and living. I can be reborn.

Relationship: as Merton wrote, what saves us all in the end. I reached out to friends who are also

suffering. I spent time with my people. I loved on my little ones without mental interruption. I listened to the news and wept as I have been unable to for weeks because the information came to me in stories, one at a time. I felt the singeing sorrow wrapping us in fire and I shared about the pain with people in a circle of chairs. I felt the bomb's reverberation without my eyes on a screen. I have no answers. I have awareness I can practice. I have hands to extend, hands to put to work, hands to hold.

Alignment: what happens when you remember your own inner wisdom and hook it to your feet. Feeling returned to the edges of my energetic appendages numbed by overconsumption and digital distraction. My heart ached again, my mind settled again, my body spoke up again, my spirit alighted again. I trusted I was all I could be, and so was enough. I did what I could do and paid attention to my life.

The next week, Holy Week, I felt intoxicatingly alive. Sensation returned like the sharp relief the morning after a terrible migraine, when suddenly you can open your eyes again. My children were playing again. The sun soothed us, the breeze refreshed us, and music brought us back to life. As we sat down to a hearty dinner on the porch under an umbrella's shade, I asked my oldest son about his favorite part of the day. Without hesitation, he responded, "Right now, eating​ this dinner out here with everybody."

The next night, he ritually received a foot-washing. He washed my feet and his brother's in return. He knew it was a way to teach us how to love. But first, curiously, he watched others enact the old, symbolic practice. He tenderly expressed, "I want to have my feet washed, but I feel nervous." Then, he accepted the reassurance of his mother's hand, his young friend Justice's kindness, and sat with his legs dangling above the ceremonial bowl. He smiled as his small, wet feet were dried in a soft towel.

He was eager to bend and pour the water over my feet. I breathed in, letting the gentleness of his inexpert fingers touch my heart, letting water trickle down my toes and from my eyes, letting the painful and powerful tenderness of sacrifice and resurrection wash me anew. When he finished, he hugged me close. "I love you, Mom. Let's do that again!" Later, after washing the feet of his baby brother, he spontaneously embraced him with passion. They held one another without self-consciousness. "Mmm. I love you, Ronin."

To share meals and wash each other's feet;
to choose personal presence and engaged action over information consumption and paralysis;
to stand under silent pines and sit in circles of people listening;
to trust the photosynthesis of my soul and balanced permeability;
to protect my spirit by preferring community and following my own creative movement;
to make space for healing, however long it takes;
to surrender the idea that anyone else knows better how I may best serve the world:
these are the daily fast I choose.

After early morning storms, we rose on Easter Sunday to a clear sky, stepping into water and light at play under our feet.

Vernal Equinox Blessing

Outrage is the force that pushes plants past unyielding ground in awareness that the time has come to grow.


Justice is the breakthrough of green from concrete, of linked arms and raised voices.


May this be a season to compel us to crumble oppressive systems, perspectives, and practices, inside and around us.


The Earth and her people fertilize strong, sprouting RESISTANCE like new flowers flourishing.


A radical, revolutionary Vernal Equinox to all.

Holding Place, Healing Place

"Would you like me to tell you a story about a hot air balloon?"

"Yes."

Oak rubbed his wet eyes and wriggled closer into the fold of my arm, laying on my chest. Ronin rested across my side, nursing at the breast. I wanted sleep. I wanted space. I wanted to be quiet. But the moment required more from me. I took a long breath.

It had been an intensely trying afternoon. I could list the many compounded and likely reasons why Oak was having difficulty​: an early morning wakeup, no nap, busy schedule, no decent meal... But the truth was that he was holding even more than those synergized struggles. I cannot pretend to know fully what he may have been feeling or experiencing that afternoon. I only know two things: that I, too, have been in spaces where I could not understand what was happening to me; and that I trust that, somehow, I - we all - have to learn to be there for one another when we see someone we love go someplace beyond.

It was the moment when he was screaming and thrashing as his dirty diaper overflowed and his brother was wailing in sleepy hunger, as I tried to keep his legs from kicking my baby and change the mess as calmly and carefully as I could, that I felt the ugly surge of repulsion: I. WANT. OUT. This is too much. I need a break RIGHT NOW. It is too big, too heavy, too close.

I looked at my child in distress. Yes. It is too big.
So, I realized resolutely, I was not going anywhere.

By some small miracle, I did not scream or run or hit or grab or cry. I did what I didn't want to: I asked his permission, then I drew him in. I held him close. I reminded him he was safe. I tried to listen. He could barely articulate what was happening to him. Through choking sobs, he repeated over and over:
"I'm just so sad, Mommy. I don't know why. I'm...Just...SAD."

I told him I heard him. I didn't try to fix it. I just listened. More tears came for all of us.

His exhaustion made him more awake, but as we piled in bed, I thought perhaps a story could settle him alongside his brother. When he took notice of the balloons stenciled along the border of the bedroom, I told a version of a story I had spoken to him many times before:

"Once upon a time, there were two little boys.Their names were Oakie and Ronin.

"One day, as they were playing outside, they looked up and saw colorful balloons high in the sky. So far away, the balloons looked very small.

"But as they watched, the balloons started to look bigger and bigger...because they were coming down, down, closer to the ground. Soon, they could see the baskets below the balloons with people riding in them. Soon, they could hear the noise of the fire burning to keep the balloons full of warm air. Soon, the baskets touched the ground - the balloons had landed!"

Soon, we would leave his brother to nap as we went downstairs for a snack. It required holding, waiting through tears, gently offering a bite, patiently waiting to hear the need, breathing through the discomfort and exhaustion, to get down the much-needed nutrition. It required staying close when I wanted to create distance with exasperation or anger as the process took more time than I felt I could give. It meant letting go of my ideas of what was acceptable or not. It meant checking in with myself to be fully present to the moment. It meant getting myself back on track when I missed the mark. It meant complete surrender to my child with open arms.

I cannot inhabit where my son lives; I can only visit there. I can only visit when I listen. I can only see clearly when I'm close, and curious, and kind. I may not always understand, but I can stand by. I can be a landing. I can enter alongside. I can honor that I'm somewhere I've never been.

"Oak and Ronin floated up, up, up into the clouds...and below them, their house, the street, all the cars and buildings and people grew smaller and smaller. They felt the warm sun on their faces. They felt the cool wind at their backs. They imagined they were almost close enough to touch the clouds."

If it can be this stretching to hold my young child with love and let myself be open, how can I expect to hold with love a world of others who do harm, to enter their pain and recognize the throbbing Need at the center of any act of violence? How can healing happen?

I am not entirely sure which moment turned the tide, when exactly Oak felt like he was coming home to himself. I only know he kissed me, and his brother, and I suddenly felt the soothed spirit speaking beyond words. I realized I had stopped wanting to push it away. I was exhausted - we all were. Our throats were hoarse, our hearts ached. But we had weathered the storm. Nothing had been silenced. Nothing had been buried. Nothing had been turned away. And here we were, somehow still together...in some ways, perhaps, more so.

"As the day wore on and the sun began to set, the sky turned a rainbow of colors. Ronin yawned and said, "I'm getting sleepy." Oak patted his back and said, "I think it's time to go home."

"So they gently dimmed the fire in the balloon and began to sink, down, down, down, closer and closer to their home again. Soon, they could see the streets and homes and people. Soon, they could clearly see their own house and green yard. Soon, they felt the basket touch the ground, and gently, they opened the door and stepped outside.

"They turned to wave goodbye to the balloons as they floated up again into the sky, farther and farther until, as night settled, they disappeared into the distance. Ronin and Oak, hand in hand, turned together and went inside to recount their adventures as they drifted off to sleep. They imagined they might take another trip someday soon."

How can healing happen? I can only guess how it might begin. I can only be the most attentive and loving guest to the world of my beloveds. I can only hope to honor the gift with gentleness. I can only let go, then hold close.