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.

Next Humankind

Bristly limbs of bare trees scrape the December sky blanketing Kentucky hills. Vehicles zoom 65 miles an hour across formations 480 million years in the making. Ronin, seven months old, rides near the window, winter scenery streaming past him, his keen eyes the color of pine brush and moss, soft skin pale like sycamore bark. I watch his warm fingers dexterously grasp little toys in play; solid bones, sturdy as limestone, give structure that animates his energy. A wind, I imagine, whistles through the corridors of branches along those ancient mounds, paths as multifarious as dendrite gardens in the mind. I listen to my son's breathing, the gentle, vibrational "aaah" as he explores his own sound.

The people native to this land lived here for the better part of 15,000 years before they were assaulted with metal and gunpowder by white invaders. In a few hundred years, their territory has been sliced by highways, cut by machines seeking fuel for capital, drenched in the byproducts of oil and coal. Native people live here no longer. The people who remain, the poor, are dying of cancer. And then, there are also storytellers, weavers, farmers, midwives, and healers - those who rectify the desecration with their creative spirits. I recall the courage of the Northern water protectors and hear chords of their song settle in the valleys like fog.

My mind wanders from Appalachia to Aleppo, the children covered in white ash, unsure which breath may be their last. They have stopped crying; their eyes are tunnels that lead me to my own incriminating complicity. I sit comfortably on a cushion as their homes and safe places crumble, the ancient city a living ruin. Bomb blasts reverberate in humanity's foundation. Instead of speaking out, much of the world sips coffee through small plastic mouthpieces that will take the better of 1,000 years to break down. The darkness increases. I click screen buttons, send electronic dollars, in the false light of a cell phone. Oak, two years old, happily sings of silver and gold, of the light's return. I close my eyes and pray.

At the Smithsonian, Robby and I turned to find Oak with his arms around bronze statues of two early humans, a child and mother. He gently patted the little one's back, keenly peering in the direction of the small statue's gaze, inquisitive about what the elder figure seemed to be demonstrating. We silently observed our own child, descendant of these ancestral creatures, embody through his reflexive curiosity the evolution of their instruction. His touch was fond, familial. I saw through tears the exhibit headline, "Imagination Emerges."

Humankind has drawn invisible lines to create countries and concepts, using the mind as a template for terrain we can reconstruct. Young primates yet, we continue to grapple with what power we can wield to magnify our species' influence and centricity. But the nautilus spiral of Earth time betrays our flimsy superiority: the thin edge, nearly invisible, is human history, all 3 million years. In its unfathomable complexity, Earth boasts the majesty of 4600 million years. And we are citizens of a young planet in this unexplored universe, 15 billion years wide.

Cold, white marble, carved to look weightless, shoulders the recognizable Capitol domes. The extravagance distracts from the metallic taste of death, the smell of suffering, holding the place together like mortar. Countless African slaves worked to forge these spaces in which they were not regarded as human. The lofty ideals emblazoned on the walls, speaking of liberty and dignity, taunt the memories of African people whose rich heritage was scoured like ship decks, whose vibrancy has survived their oppression and their descendants'. "Out of many, one" - by force. The efforts of over 200 years have not yet made us a land of the free. To this day, only the survivors of oppression feel the heaviness, accurately estimate the cost. Their descendants are the prophets of our time, calling out in the wilderness of ignorance, holding aloft truth's torch.

In the belly of a colonial ship, Oak said, "A long time ago, I was down here and heard a loud BOOM." Running through the tunnel between Congress's Library and the Capitol Building, he remarked, "Before I was born, I was down here." Certain places hum with a story we somehow know we continue with the tones and cadence of our Voice. The trees and hills and sands and stars are still telling it. The children know the language and interpret for us in every unexamined gesture, every intentional question, every moment we stop talking long enough to listen, to breathe, to touch freedom. The scope of our lives can only be as broad as the understanding of our smallness.

I can imagine the next iteration of humanity: a species that looks in the mirror and sees a striving animal, that begins to only describe any individual with their chosen name, that participates as a cell in the body. The next humankind will absorb the sword into its heart and there dissolve it, will again discover fire but this time within, will honor abundance with temperance, will be led by the generations to come. The next humankind will know its humble place on the dirt. Our ancestors are waiting for us there, whispering the Soul's common fate.

"Aleppo" derives from the Aramaic word 'Halaba,' white like its soil and marble. The mountains ache like exposed joints, blasted and bald, empty caverns devoid of black coal, ghost canaries singing. I look up into the clouds swirling as in the soothsayer's sphere where questions answer each other. Freezing rain falls on the glass pane, running like rivers or neuron networks or veins, before evaporating into the atmosphere, eternal air and light.

Gratitude Is

Gratitude does not recline in an oversized armchair, stuffed and surrounded in luxury, declaring, "I'm so thankful for what I have."

Gratitude leaves our mouths and arms open wide in wonder that WE EXIST when there could have been absolute no-thing-ness.

Gratitude makes us bare and vulnerable to the truth that nothing at all can be earned...everything we have is gifted by the ancestral universe.

Gratitude illuminates our rich happiness as intrinsically connected to all others' well-being.

Gratitude deepens the hunger to empty our pockets and lighten our packs to be more available to the Source, to nourish our Earth siblings, to share the infinite abundance of Life.

Gratitude requires us to investigate why everyone does not have enough.

Gratitude demands we defend the land, water, air, and diversity of this planet: our common birthrights.

Gratitude implores us to take only what we need so that others might live.

Gratitude insists that we care for each other in messy, challenging, unpopular, radical ways.

Gratitude is the sigh at the end of a day well-spent, whether with tears or pain or belly-aching laughter or deep soul gazes or whatever it took to feed our Children, whispering, "I am blessed to make the most of being alive."

Gratitude is the only redemptive final prayer.

What Would Dory Do?

(Disclaimer: this is a very silly but personally relevant reflection on a Disney movie...use what's at hand, right?)

At the story's beginning, Dory despairs. She believes that she has lost what's precious to her because she is who she is: forgetful, flighty, and seemingly directionless. At times, she feels trapped by the idea that those qualities can only yield the same sad results in her life. She feels she can't do anything "right."

However, by the tale's end (no spoilers!), she realizes she can accomplish incredible things, in fact, BECAUSE of who she is. She's willing to take a risk without certainty of the outcome. She trusts her intuition even when there isn't a clear "reason." She is optimistic and "just keeps swimming" even when setbacks seem insurmountable. She depends on friends to help where she knows she can't rely on just herself. Her friends in search of her end up finding her because they ask, "What would Dory do?"

Eventually, Dory begins to *intentionally* lean into her wacky way of moving through the world. In several tense moments, she comically asks herself, "What would I do? What would I do?" Each time, she's saved by her own unique approach. At last, doing what Dory would do allows her to reclaim her losses.

These days, I'm trying to ask myself a similar question. Instead of feeling anxious and trapped, depressed or despairing, I'm trying to take a deep breath and repeat this mantra: "What would Mandy do?"

When I think of my most aligned, grounded, open self and who She could be in the world, I catch a glimpse of who I want to be and become. The Best Me is someone I want to be like. Just checking in with myself is a practice in intentionally living better, one step (splash!) at a time.

My friends, the wide ocean of possibility needs YOU to be just who and how you are. We need your weird, your clever, your unprecedented, your unimaginable ways. Only you can BE you, and only by being ourselves wholeheartedly can we just keep swimming together.

Dory doesn't only end up finding something that was lost "out there." The happy ending is that she found...Dory. Dory found Dory, and only she knew the way.

Today, please go in search of yourself, each moment you can pause and pursue you. Sift through the reflexive reactions or self-judgments. I implore you to ask yourself, "What would ✨✨✨I✨✨✨ do?"

The answer to that will help us ALL find ourselves. 

Post-election Fireside Ponderings

🎶"We are the world..."
"What a wonderful world..."🎶
...songs and sentiments I want to believe.
We all just need warmth and light, someone to hold us.
We're all looking up at the same, big old moon.

But my friends' children are wailing in fear of their families being separated because they escaped here.
A child was murdered on the same street where I attended a baby shower this weekend...presumably because he was a refugee.
Brown and black neighbors in my city are being assaulted more blatantly because racist predators feel empowered.

These aren't illusions. The moon suddenly looks so big,
but in fact, it's even bigger... it's just so far away, it's easy to pretend we're imagining its enormity.

Fire breaks down everything it touches. We reflexively step back, stay safe...but sometimes, we're meant to walk right into it. Now, it's time.

In the end, personal relationships - and love - will save everything.

Election Vigil

A family from Michigan was trying to distract themselves from the news and just happened to come to the Big 4 Bridge. The parents and three children were in Louisville for a work conference but couldn't stand sitting in the hotel room, feeling alone. As they approached the foot of the bridge, they saw a few folks gathered with candles. They were asked, "Are you here for the vigil?"

Afterward, they introduced themselves with profuse gratitude. "We had no idea something like this was going on. It was just what we needed." They were just what I needed, too.

Someone standing next to me caught my eye, smiling in the candlelight. "I'm the sister of the first man who was married to his partner in Kentucky," she told me. We tearfully embraced. "They both had to work tonight, but I wanted to be somewhere...for them. For me." For all of us.

A student, a lawyer, a college professor, a Waldorf teacher, an international nonviolent witness, a retreat leader, a doula, an academic, a massage therapist, a writer. Children, parents, activists, friends, siblings, teachers, neighbors. Louisvillians. U.S. citizens. Companions.

All holding a light.
All turning to one another, sharing their names, looking into one another's eyes.
All standing next to flowing water, common element, and bridges, structures of connection.
All holding their fears and hopes and angers and despairs and visions.
All singing, "Dona nobis pacem."
All nodding in recognition that we MUST listen to our children and let them lead us.
All imagining what we hope to see in a more just and peaceful world.
All choosing to show up on a cold night to be reminded of who we are, and that we belong to each other.

Gratitude for that circle of light. Let's tend it. Let's be nourished by it. Let's grow it. Let's use it for our collective liberation.

Attention

Pinks, blues, golds soften the steel gray of downtown at dawn. The clouds, the river, early light through the strati create an elemental symphony. As I watch the shades shift, inexplicably, thoughts of the hurricane in Haiti assail me. Mornings in Port-au-Prince, the taste of mango, the sun on tin roofs, smoke rising, memories older than a decade touch the present. I remember reading a friend's recent prayer to have her heart broken by the world's suffering. I cry at the wonder that all of this can inhabit a moment. My son remarks, "Clouds make thunder, Mommy." When I ask him what made him think of that, he replies, "Nothing."

We arrive home but none of us want to go inside. I hand my infant flowers and leaves, watch him delightedly grasp at the textures and sense the crackles with his whole little body. He looks at me as the sun rises higher and covers my head in warm rays; I see the gold in his hazel eyes. We gaze at one another, and I wonder if I have ever seen anything so magnificent. I realize he is looking at me with the same love-eyes. I suddenly feel alive.

Soon, I succumb to distraction and check Facebook on my phone. A friend's prompt, "Tell me something beautiful," leaves me eager to comment with details of my day. I read one woman's response that tells the story of her grandmother saying she'd reincarnate as a butterfly. That reminds me: an intuitive once told me that honeybees are a sign my great-grandmother, one of my early caregivers, is close by with a message. I smile at that lovely thought. I glance up from the small screen to see, with surprise, a single honeybee hovering in my line of vision. I set my phone down and watch it carefully, breathing deeply. I think, perhaps I had better keep paying attention to my life. She soon flies away. 

My oldest son follows a roly-poly as if it is the most important thing to do (isn't it?) until it crawls out of sight. "I miss her," he frowns, head bowing. Soon enough, though, another roly-poly is discovered. My boy gently offers his finger again and again until she crawls onto his hand. After some time with his friend, he remarks, "Now it's time for her to go to her Mommy." He carefully returns her to her stone, wishing her goodbye. "Go see your Mommy!"

An elderly woman who walks through my neighborhood most mornings, instead of waving and quickly continuing on her way, comes down the path to my front stoop to greet my toddler and coo at my baby. She takes obvious joy in their liveliness. "I'm going to try to get out and work in the yard," she comments. "Enjoy the beautiful morning," I say reflexively. After meandering talk, her voice quiets. "I've just been diagnosed with lung cancer." Words collapse in my throat, so I hold silence with her. With tears in her eyes, she looks once more at my children and walks away. I keen the edges of her sorrow. Watching her retreat, Oak softly says, "I love her."

My son stares at me intently when my own tears come. I explain that I'm sad our neighbor is sick. He holds out his arms, holds me, kisses me, says, "I love you, Mommy. Here, this make you feel better," and offers a drink of water. Once my tears are dried, he lays in the grass, saying, "I love laying in the grass under the brown tree. Me take a nap on the stones." I cradle my younger boy close and offer him my breast. Soft skin on soft skin, milk and tears, warmth and closeness, comfort in the healing pace of knowing, all at once, that you have plenty of time.

I tell the story of the pumpkin seed: that, someday, with the pattern hidden inside its pale shell, it will break open into a squash vine, which will yield as many pumpkins as there were seeds in the pumpkin from which it came. My infant quietly looks on. My toddler turns one seed over and over in his palm. Later, we cook the pumpkin flesh and sweet potatoes. We stir in coconut milk and spices. We are patient, letting the mixture simmer. We smell hints of a meal in the making, one we will share together with others who join us at the table. We listen to the noon bell chime.

Black Lives Matter.

Just now, Oak found my unfinished poster from the last LSURJ meeting (Louisville Showing Up for Racial Justice) and asked to finish it. "Look, Mom! 'Black Lives Matter' - me want to color green and red!" I couldn't believe he remembered me telling him what it was going to say WEEKS ago. He also remembers when we walked through downtown Louisville chanting the mantra several months ago. It's a phrase that already carries meaning for him because he sees that it carries meaning for people he cares about.

He added the colors, I added the final word. I'll hang up our collaboration somewhere others will see it, too. Why is this SO IMPORTANT to me?

I wholeheartedly support the BLM movement because my sons - ALL our children - will not inherit a nation in which all people are truly free. In fact, most people are NOT free. Since the beginning, the United States' economic and political schema has been dependent on systemic subjugation of First Nation peoples, Black persons, women, poor folk, etc. (I am constantly learning of new modes of oppression employed in my country). The U.S. is founded in racism. This is not debatable - it is a fact. The refrain of oppressed peoples in this country has been, for centuries, "America was never America to me," as the poet Langston Hughes once wrote.

Today, these histories of prejudice remain deeply rooted in our psyches as white people. Because we have been so profoundly conditioned by these histories, false narratives, and structures that serve to continue and further racism and oppression, we aren't even AWARE that we are prejudiced. In all real senses of the word, I am racist. Again: I AM RACIST. I can't help but be racist as a white person in this country. Since before I can remember, I have been internalizing imagery of thuggish black men, stereotyped native people, passive women, mocked queer folk, and ignorant poor people. We are swimming in these lies. It has taken years of listening and learning to realize the racist tendencies within me and to admit that they exist, even though I don't want them to.

The trick is to recognize I cannot immediately, or perhaps ever, rid myself of these internalized judgments...just like, no matter how hard I try, I may never be able to stop myself from feeling angry. What I CAN control is how I respond. I can notice with honesty what arises in me. I can listen more intentionally to people who I don't often hear from. I can admit when I'm wrong, blind, or ignorant. I can let myself be led by people who have been silenced for generations. I can start to see, think and talk about, and eventually move in the world differently. I can set my own mind-heart-soul free, little by little.

However, even as a white, middle class, cisgender, queer/bisexual, mostly femme-presenting woman, I am not free until my black siblings are no longer oppressed. My liberation is bound to everyone else's. Until every last human is respected, cared-for, and upheld, I and all others will be bound.

I feel uncomfortable putting these basic, boiled-down thoughts out there. It isn't because I am afraid that I'll be opposed; it's because I know how very much I have to learn. I know my language isn't totally correct. I left out sooo much. I surely messed something up badly. I know this is a childlike sketch of the journey I'm on. But this is a small piece to hopefully open a door of understanding for those who don't know why I am always saying, with passion, "Black Lives Matter." I am saying it because my own life depends on it, and so does yours, whoever you are. I will continue to learn so that I am more and more prepared to answer my children the day they ask, "Why do we say 'Black Lives Matter'?"

Want to learn more? Join me. Come to a SURJ meeting. Visit BLM's website. Read a book (I have some suggestions). Start talking to white people and listening to people of color. Let's connect. Let's grow together. Let's work toward our collective freedom.

Look Again

Today has been one of high highs and low lows. At a high point, I was gifted by a teacher with the insight that practicing respect to another is "to look again;" respecting my children is a practice of seeing them more curiously, more clearly, just as they are, and reverencing their needs and wishes. By engaging from a place of trust in who they are, my children and I can move together more collaboratively through life. I was humbled to recognize how much better they are at seeing me than I am at seeing them; even when I am at my worst, my children treat me so very gently with few expectations or demands. They joyfully take me on as a partner in their work, which, as Mary Oliver wrote, leaves me "mostly standing still and learning to be astonished." At the end of the day, my boys and my sweetie-boo realign me to the heart of life: a centerpoint of Being Here Now Contentedly, trusting that we're all doing the best we can, holding space for all we are, which is ever-infinite, despite my thoughtless attempts at times to limit, control, or predict those dimensions. As another wise friend once told me, "there is always enough space." Tonight, I hold the tears and the giggles, the screams and the snuggles, the what-will-be and this-right-now, grateful for this little abundance, these little bodies near mine, and all I have yet to see in them.

To Be Well

Cradling two small bodies that are struggling but not suffering, I cried as I pictured the many parents weeping over children who will never be well or safe again.
•••
I lost sleep; lost more sleep; felt sick myself; felt inadequate in the disorder; slept when they slept, but badly; lost a sense of time; forgot my tiredness; found a slower pace; read the news; thought of those whose souls never rest; felt sicker; listened to my children laugh together; took better care of my children and myself.
•••
I decided to walk the distance instead of running it to talk with a troubled friend who, before I knew her, almost didn't live to be who I am now discovering.
•••
"Life is an endurance race anyway," she remarked nonchalantly. The water cooled my throat. My legs did not hurt. Why do I think I have to run to be good?
•••
I remembered walking across the alley, hand-in-hand with my son and carrying my baby as I spoke to a gentle woman with her life in a rolling cart. She spoke hurriedly so as not to bother me:
"Will there be food? Sometimes there are free meals. The weather is still a little too warm, hotter than Shelbyville in the country. I used to ride horses, you know. Have a good evening."
All I could think about was getting into the meeting, to which we were already late.
My boy excitedly called to her retreating back, "Me like horses! Me like black horses! Her...her like horses. She my friend."
We had gone to the wrong location. I had gotten it wrong. Or had I? Maybe these things have nothing to do with my inadequacies.
•••
Songs and stories became more spontaneous the longer I followed their lead. They clasped hands and gazed at each other with no object but to touch the moment. The words were not so important. What mattered were the cadence, the companionship, the common discovery.
•••
When you are well again, you realize just how good it is to be.