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.

Autumnal Equinox

#blacklivesmatter

Everywhere, the monarch butterflies crack
through chrysalises, emerging: black, white,
flame. Human bodies spill in the street,
dark in the daylight. Blood cascades down
legs of mothers as they cry out birthing
the children. Falling golden leaves land
on graves. Migrations across invisible lines
happen for insects, souls living and dead.
The waking hours dim. The wings are soft.

Suddenly, my infant son learns to lift his head.
My older boy begins to count: one, two, three...
Within, all paths are secretly wired in traceries
of neurons, scales, patterns. The networks grow
complex and burdensome. Melanin marks shades
of endangerment. Mothers grieve their living
children. History pages, pale sheets, ghost masks hide
in plain sight. Shiny badges and tear gas obfuscate
mirrors. What cannot evolve breaks down.

Always, the world turns in seasons. Ancestors stand
at our side, pleading. Hands, fists, hymns, shouts,
prayers rise in the air. Awakened ones run
with their heads down through fire. Harvests burn
in cornucopias. Truth flutters precariously between
the sun and the moon. Hearts probe like antanae
seeking freedom. Courage reconstructs in spiritual
cocoons. Children color an autumn rainbow:
black, white, flame. Forms for flight unfurl, alight.

World Breastfeeding Week

The heaviness of a world punctuated by hate lightens to the weight of this bundle of potential gently resting on my chest. My anxiety settles as milk drops with an ache into my breasts and his mouth and eyes latch on, drawing me body and soul into a mundane, mystical engagement.

He gazes at me in full trust that I will accept him, cherish him, nurture him. I gaze back, tears welling at the grace and gratitude that I am accepted, cherished, and nurtured by him without question or exception.

He grants me gifts by just being who he is, a little one that tethers me to the One. By meeting his needs, he meets mine. I find reassurance that his demands and cries are perfectly met by what I can give.

His mouth opens wide in delight at nothing but our mutual attention - I return a smile.

In our arrangement, I find countless teachings for when fear and grief threaten:

There is ample distraction and abundant despair, but nothing more important or pressing than making myself available to this embodiment of humankind's essence to whom I am immediately present.

There are a billion directions we may go, but nowhere to get to with one another but right here, now.

There is imperfection, but nothing to fix, only truth and stories to uncover and tell and let lead the way onward.

There is distinction, but not disconnection - acknowledging our interdependence brings peace within and without.

In the end, all strife derives from this root, that we are desperate to remember how dear we are to Life's family.

His hand rests on my heart in a pledge, a prayer, wordlessly spoken to the new world fed and fulfilled in this sacrament.

It was when we walked into the room packed with hundreds of people.
It was when the singing bowl called us all to silence.
It was when I looked around the room and felt grateful for the many people I knew, and the many I didn't.
It was when we sang together or recited meaningful words.
It wasn't when I shared why I showed up for racial justice.
It was when a brave woman of color spoke that THIS was the first time she'd ever been able to talk about hter experience as a Black woman in front of white people, and tears began to fall from her eyes.
It was when the room exploded in applause for her.
It was when the armed white supremacists lurked in the doorway, guns at their hips.
It was when I stopped to listen to the chatter of children in the room.
It was when I crossed paths with people I hadn't seen in years and marveled at life's patterns.
It was when we marched and chanted, eliciting jubilant honks and affirning fist pumps.
It was when elderly Black folks raised their hands as they drove past, saying, "Yes!" "Thank you!"
It was when people couldn't stop smiling as they filmed us on their camera phones.
It was looking into my partner's eyes, sharinga meaningful kiss, and holding our babies close.
It was when Oak, of his own volition, seriouslyabd enthusiastically cried, "Black Lives Matter."
It was when I watched our Black leaders tear up as we shouted louder and louder: "Black Lives Matter."
It was when Robby and I cried, too.
It was when Oak insisted on carrying his sign.
It was when we asked Oak how he felt afterward: "Good." What did he think? "Loud."
It was then that I felt it. I felt it in my bones. I am in the right place and time. As a white woman, this is my duty and call. White people, let's keep showing up. Silence is complicity. Be loud! BLACK LIVES MATTER.

New Lens

(an urgent invitation to my fellow white people)

my people: we need to go deep
into darkness under the skin - follow the
white rabbit through caverns of stories our collective
consciousness has constructed, the false
fortresses of aeons protecting our fragile ego -
look to the ghost we now only see through the
white of our eyes, the horror of our made-up history,
kept blank and tidy to buffer ourselves from
bloodshed, the rainbow of our fear we smear
across the Earth crying out its colored hymn -
white space     along the margins, we manage
white pages of a history incomplete, staged news -
this pause is to let the voices we stifled with
white noise ring in the silence.

let's start by raising a
white flag over no land, no place or people,
save our own heart waving in surrender
to a legacy we inherit but choose to transmute -
leave lying the bleached bones of hate on shores of
imperial pursuit, standing from our
white hot privilege seat to take up a new spirit -
rid ourselves of oppressive nebula layers of pain,
clouds of grief - cross fields of disparate matter
to touch mercy’s atonement and reveal the small
white star at the center, glowing dimly against
the Black of eternal spacetime, our honest ancestry - soaring to new cosmic horizons from which we view
our true natures, older than the universe -
our future, prismatic rays of light.

Refocus

The day draws down as the sun sets, the house quiets, and my littlest one snuggles close to me in our evening ritual. He reaches out, grasps my hair, gazes into my eyes, and compels me to let go of whatever keeps me from complete engagement. As I watch the movement of his eyes and hands, I am overwhelmed with wonder by the coming together of instinct and personality, bodily and energetic processes, individuality and interconnection, all in this microcosmic, nourishing moment.

Ten short weeks ago, we were so new to one another this way; now, the habitual rhythm is easy to overlook busy hour to busy hour. It just happens, like the growth of my baby I only notice in sudden spurts of surprise. He is growing fast, and so am I, thanks to his tutelage. Neither of us is the same person as we were when we first met face to freshly-born face. Who is this small being before me? I look into his eyes and dream of who he will be.

Then, I realize this is another distraction from the present person I have the opportunity to discover here and now. I refocus. I listen to his grunts and sniffs, smile as he smiles and softly speaks in his own lovely song, breathe deep the smell of his skin, and gently trace my fingers through his fuzzy hair. We look and look and look at each other. Who does he see?

I am humbled by the thought that he does not dream of who I will become - he happily accepts me here and now. He is teaching me to do the same. In innumerable ways, I am a stranger unto myself, just as my child is both intimate to my being's core and simultaneously someone I can never fully know.

The world is just like that. We can dream of what it will become, but the only way to the future is through this Now. Who are you, new world quietly breathing? What do you see when you look at me?