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.

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.