Roots

Family; they are the people we love, but that we don’t always choose.

Family seems to find us, sometimes they are the people we are born into; sometimes blood, sometimes not. Sometimes they are people we love and don’t know why or they are the people we hate and know exactly why, but for some reason we can’t seem to shake them. They hang in the back of our hearts and minds always whispering for us to come back home.

They are always singing “remember us, remember what we taught you- either through bad examples or good examples. Remember that time we laughed when the worst was happening or that time we danced amongst divorce and death, addictions and different views. Remember.”

That is who family is. They are the people that cause us to acknowledge, to remember our roots and the places we have come from, to remember our traditions and our battles. They are the people whose legacies we honor and the people who’s pain we sometimes carry with us, even if they have passed, until that pain is fully renewed.

Families are the people who are weaved together whether they like it or not and no matter how hard one tries to unbind the weave, it always comes back together; in a school family-tree project, at a holiday, a wedding, or a funeral. It comes together through dancing, crying, eating, or laughing; these are the binds that tie.

This is family.

Without family we have no story, we are drifting alone on a raft fending off the dark waves. With family are roots, roots that run deep from generation past to generation now, family transcends time.

Families all carry a part of the people who have come before them, because everyone comes from the same deep roots, even if they have forgotten them. We carry our family in our mannerisms and in physical features. We carry each other when we need it most. Despite not understanding, despite hurt caused, despite all the shit.

Family is the people who fill in the gaps for each other. Family is how the world ought to be. Family is the people who have your back whether blood or not. Family is the people in your corner when you need it and when you think you don’t. They ask “are you sure this is a good idea? Have you thought about this or that? I think you need to do this.”

But above all they are asking you to remember.

“Do you rememeber?”

The Space that Calls Our Name

No one tells you the time of day,
the time of year, or the time of life.
So we live. Live and
keep living until
something catches us. Until
something pats us on the back
and screams a whisper into our ear
–so what are you doing-

What are you doing where you are?
Why are you there?
Do you know, know?
Do any of us know
The time?

Father thinks the family is cursed-
“Would He do,
do what I think he
Might do? Do for years
Because of one,
Because of all?”

She teaches her mom how to add
“Help me through this one”
Looking into her daughter’s eyes. Humble.
I brought you life but I need your help.

He talks to his dad and his brother. Conversations
Through sweats of pain. The cancer has spread
And his brother and dad have been dead.
Dead, he will be soon. Yet he talks to them

Because no one knows the time of the year
Or the time of the day, the day that will
Change the mold, or smother the fire
Or increase the blood to the tumor spot.

No one knows.

She is back. No one knows.
He has waited, yet who knows?
Hands chase and hearts race, but
No one knows what permanence
Exists through it all. No one knows
What the space in-between it all means.

That space between life and death,
Bridging reality and hallucinations,
Between hoping and hopes-up.
That space that calls our name and
Makes us yearn for grace, for love,
For glue.

Who knows?

Change

Change. Why do we run from it? Why is it so painful? We like to think change is rare, like it is outside of everything, outside of everyday experience. Change seems so unnatural: it seems as soon as our feet begin to touch the ground they are lifted again into the abyss of transition.
Maybe change though is more natural than we would like to think. We are always changing, always becoming a different version of our one-moment-in-the-past-selves. Our hair falls out and in its place new hair grows. Our skin regenerates after constantly shedding the old. For the first 26 years of our lives our brains and bodies are not even done fully developing, fully growing, fully becoming what we are supposed to be. But what are we supposed to be? Do we ever get to one stationary being? Or are we constantly at work, constantly transformed over time, constantly morphing into an image of ourselves.

Change catches us off guard.  It always seems sudden; people move, school ends, and love dies. When we finally take the time to look back we say “wow how did that even happen,” it’s because natural change is slow, nuanced, the old is replaced almost instantly by new and subtle variations and so yes, it does sneak up on us.

We look up at the tress and it seems as if they changed over night, but the reality is they have been slowly transforming over time. The reality is they change every season, every year.

Every moment changing, every moment morphing, every second different from the last. 

Time continues to build upon its resume in our bodies, within our minds, throughout our personalities. We change and it is beautiful. We change without us evening noticing it. We change because we have to, in order to survive.  Maybe being surprised is better than being aware in every moment.

We can look back and say “yeah, you know I am different than I was and I am not 17 anymore…I am not 30 anymore…I am not 60 anymore.” How excruciating would it be to live completely aware every moment of morphing and transforming?

I am not the same as I was and so I will never be trapped. We can always squeeze through the bars of our tired identities and into a reality of changing…changing to be closer to the face of God. That is our reality to transform through our autumns, our winters, our summers, our springs, through birthdays, and through relationships, through all of that to come closer to the face of God.

Right Into Their Dirty Footprints

There is a world coming/to come, where the meek, the down, the religious-nothings, the dirty, the losers, and all those that don't deserve anything will inherit everything. The kingdom will crash to earth right where they are standing, right into their dirty footprints. The ostracized will be on the guest-list for the wedding celebration and dancing, laughing, feasting, balloons, and streamers, all of these, will carry their hearts from darkness into the embrace of Love!
So...

Blessed are the druggers,
the offenders,
the alcoholics,
and the cutters...

Blessed are those who
feel like they are never good enough,
or feel like they are
never pretty enough, or like they are
not worthy enough...

Blessed are those who can't fake-smile anymore, who can't pretend anymore...

Blessed are the surface dwellers, the muck-rakers,
the pushed away, and the never involved...

Blessed are those left out of the yearbook,
those thinking this is their last step,
those crying for another chance...

Blessed are the regretters,
the over-thinkers and the under-thinkers...

Blessed are those who hurt,
those who have been hurt...

Blessed are those whos names have been stripped from them,
those who have been de-humanized, labeled,
silenced
or stereotyped...

Blessed are those who have cheated, or failed, or lied...

Blessed are those who live outside:
outside of love,
outside of touch,
outside of joy,
outside of smiles,
outside of laughter...

Blessed are you, for you will
never be
outside of
the embrace of God... because
God is on your side!

God is on your side.

So for your tears, there are balloons,
for your pain there are streamers,
for your hunger there is a feast,
for your thirst drink, and
for your fear there is the
touch of Love.

For you there is God, and He/She
would never start the celebration
without
you
there!

Weaved

Life is like a circle not a line...
We always like to think about what the next step is, like we are adding on to a line. We think of everything so disconnected sometimes.
Always thinking about the future,
rarely about the present or the past. We rarely think about
how all things belong together. How all things weave together.
We rarely allow ourselves just to be. Just to sit in
the net that life has created for us.

Sometimes I sit back and look at where I am at a specific moment. Who I am siting with, or talking with, what the weather is like, sometimes what my assignements are even and i cant help but think that every moment in my life has led up to this very moment. That everything has been weaved together in such a way that there would be no other option but what is happening at that moment.

everything belongs in the weave, everything is a stran in the weave, everythig weaves together to make my life. It weaves together to show me the face of God in every moment.

God's hand is in every stitch; Her persisting love in every overlapping and intertwining moment.

It is because that pain was weaved into my life that I can smile now. I am in awe of the fog in the red leaves, because that person told me that so many years ago.

Some would call it inculteration, socialization, whatever. But it is love. God's love in my life, God's love that shows itself through weaving.

"Its a small world" because we are all weaved together, because everyone on the world is connected in some way. Roads, maps, people, ideas, we are all weaved. We are all held together by the love of God.

Everybody wants to love and be loved. That is God's face in our hearts. It keeps us weaving together.

And even when the weave seems to fall apart. When hope seems to be gone, when the strans fray and the image looses definition, all things weave together again eventually.God makes all things new.

Beautiful Brandi Sings My Soul

Before It Breaks- Brandi Carlile
Around here, it's the hardest time of year
Waking up, the days are even gone
The collar of my coat
Lord help me, cannot help the cold
The rain drops sting my eyes
I keep them closed.

But I'm feelin' no pain
I'm a little lonely and my quietest friend
Have I the moonlight? Have I let you in?

Say it aint so, say I'm happy again

Say it's over
Say I'm dreaming, say I'm better than you left me
Say you're sorry, I can take it
Say you'll wait, say you won't
Say you love me, say you don't
I can make my own mistakes
Let it bend before it breaks

I'm alright. Don't I seem to be?
Aren't I swinging on the stars? Don't I wear them on my sleeve?
Went looking for a crossroads, It happens everyday
And whichever way you turn, I'm gonna turn the other way

Say it's over
say I'm dreaming, say I'm better than you left me
Say you're sorry, I can take it
Say you'll wait, say you won't
Say you love me, say you don't
I can make my own mistakes
Learn to let it bend before it breaks

Say it's over
Say I'm dreaming, say I'm better than you left me
Say you're sorry, I can take it
Say you'll wait, say you won't
Say you love me, say you don't
I can make my own mistakes
Let it bend before it breaks

I Wish I Would Have

 I Wish I Would Have


I am learning how
Not to let you last.
Keeping you from lingering always.
Failing at not sensing. Hoping I
Can smother dreams. Push them
Back into my blue
Lenses that see
You holding stars.

Years, years, years of
Smoke staining my vision.
Un-pure air stabs the sun
Bloody with a hazy fog. Clouded
Time, I cannot shake you. You keep to
Yourself and to others. But I spin and
Spin for you always. I murmur your
Song as a rusty music box. Spinning.

I was angry and I didn’t name you.
I was cut and I didn’t heal you.
I was out of tears with no other
Expression but to love you.

I wasn’t invited to your birthday.
You are not a girl anymore
and i missed it all.
I had a gift anyway. I
Crafted it like always.

You would
Never want it now,
a woman. Never
Except a gift from someone you
Have left for slaughter. The rain
Poured and I was convulsing in
Loneliness so deep I couldn’t find
The bottom.

But I would let the asphalt engulf
Me forever in its torrential puddles
just to be here. Here still loving.

I will not break until you have
Been lifted to love but you deny it all.

I see your eyes and
Blindness melts.
Colors come again, ears pop and
Sound floods in painful bliss.

You are my expression and
You have always been.
You know that, but you
Cannot name me.


I cannot have
A name from you.
You were angry and you didn’t name me.

You were cut and I
Couldn’t heal you.
You were crying and I
Couldn’t hold you.

I wish I would have.