Category: My Poems

Silent for Days, becomes Years

Silent for Days, becomes years
when the Girl Child now Woman is afraid of her own words,
allowing her many fears to overwhelm.
sometimes offering Powerful Utterances
that shape, guide, portend,
sometimes paralyzed.
Deep calls to Deep, inside
the Place Where She is Full, saying
lay down, let go.

Silent for Days, becomes years
when the Girl Child now Woman
knows and comes to love
herself and comes to believe
in the One who Gave His Life for us all.
Still waters, Silent
deep, deep inside
the Girl Child now Woman is daily groping,
hoping not to misstep.  knowing
she holds one, two, three, four
Souls in her sweaty, grasping hands.
she is hopeful and
needing, wanting to nurture and heal.
so much faith, so much potential, so much possibility.

Silent for Days, becomes years
when Girl Child now Woman
lays down her life, lets go
of control,
of results,
of Knowing her Future or
knowing anything at all.
building calluses on her knees, head
bowed, tears flowing, hands
open, heart
free.

the Girl Child now Woman knows
how little she knows.
she lets go.  her heart
bursting from the agony of it,
the birthing of the one, two, three, four lives
put into her hands and
her One Life.
Just ahead, Looms.  Just ahead,
the One who Gave His Life for us all
Asks it of her
and she lets go.

Where are you From? (A not so whimsical look back…)

I am from…..

I am from the smells of good coffee, books scattered everywhere

and music always playing in the next room.

I am from the slightly worn leather and hard wood floors.  Used cars paid for in cash and furniture that needs replacing.

From dust bunnies chasing  us, while the dog and cats complain of inattention.

I am from things growing in the yard.

I am from a place of strangers always welcome.

I am from explosion of colors, herbs growing and losing myself in the garden.

I am from full stomachs, the yeasty smell of home made bread and pressure to be something lingering in the air.

I am from homemade cherry pie.  And lilac blossoms shocking in the spring.

I am from trees.

I am from vacations nowhere doing nothing.

I’m from holding hands when we pray and strong opinions and sarcasm.

I am from missionaries always working and  a waking up early, kind of reverent Bible believing.

I am from gratitude.

I’m from hugs, often and long.  And loud harsh ideas exchanged.

I am from shouting.

I am from doubting love.

I’m from children being seen but not heard and being told to “shut up” in Tibetan,
and Jesus loves the little children, and the Lord takes care of those that take care of themselves.

I am from the place where work is everything.

I’m from sharing what you are thankful for even when you are not thankful.

I’m from Papua New Guinea and Texas and Tibet, California and Wisconsin.

I am from Chinese food and Mexican, but not together.

I am from telling stories well and often.

I am from public shame and public affirmation.

I am from a long, carved alligator wooden table, with shells in its eyes. And a coveted conch shell.

I am from the place where secret memories are hidden deep.

—————————-

I really tried hard not to try too hard on this.  One could rewrite such a poem forever.

Adapted by Levi Romero. Inspired by “Where I’m From” by George Ella Lyon. Inspired by this idea from Ann Voskamp.  This was the template.

Highs and Lows of being an Artist in the Church

I know how blessed I am by my church though most of the time I wish only for a few deep connections.  

But a mega church blesses others when they can put on a quality mini-conference.  This weekend I attended the Pulse Arts conference sponsored by Blackhawk in Madison, WI.   It’s a unique event that brings together worship leaders, songwriters, visual artists, dancers and anyone who considers themselves “a creative” for a 24 hour blitz of music, learning and rubbing shoulders with others of a kind.  For one brief period it feels normal, even great, to be an artist and a Christian.

Two years ago I met a few artists at a Pulse event who have since then became more than acquaintances, though not quite friends. I am collaborating on a Stations of the Cross art show in a few weeks with six other visual artists and a half-dozen or more musicians.  This materialized from relationships made at the Pulse conference.  I had to put myself forward as wanting do something collaborative. Oh how I hate to put myself forward — It’s so scary.  More on that later.

Ego and Self-esteem.

Is it just creative types that are the unlikely and slightly grotesque blend of both insecure and full of themselves?

I speak for myself when I say that it is hard to be a creative and a follower of Jesus’ teachings.  We know we must be original, even imaginative.  We know we must put ourselves forward, promote ourselves and our work.

At an event like Pulse where there are some who have “made it” the conversations were dominated by the singers and songwriters who haven’t made it who are full of puppy dog, hero-worship.

I went this weekend wanting, even needing, to have deep discussions about art and faith — mostly our deep faith as an artist.  In that aspect I was a little disappointed.

Creating Art for Art’s sake.

(Who decides what’s good anyway?) 

Creatives live with the tension between our need to be fresh and original, all the while knowing there is no new idea under the sun. We also know for a fact that unless you promote yourself you may toil in obscurity forever.  But self-promotion is an anathema, at least to me.

I spent a lot of time this weekend thinking about this connection between making “good” art, success and self-promotion. 

Someone promotes themselves really well and gets a ton of attention for their thing, whatever it is.  I look at it and think it is about nothing.   Do I simply not know quality when I see it? How do “the Arts” and artists in general win, if we’re simply promoting (and opening doors) for our friends without being objective about the quality?  Yes, that’s the way the world works.  And if I’m unwilling to play the game, should I just give up now?

Before you start thinking I’m just whining because I haven’t personally been “discovered” I hope you will read on.  It is so much more complicated than that.

Essentially, art is useless.

We all know that.  We have complex reasons for creating.

In the positive column, the reasons are many. We hope to help others escape or enter a different place in a good beautiful way through the images or words or ideas or music we make.  We hope to challenge someone to a different way of thinking.  One of the sessions talked about creating for or out of a renewed sense of wonder with the world God created. We create to challenge and to point toward injustice and ugliness of the world, in the hopes of bringing change. And especially if we are believers, we create out of a wish to comfort and console, to move others toward the consolation of God.  This is not a Hallmark conclusion, but as Tolkien said in his essay On Fairy Stories, we accept “the happy disaster” of this life. Tolkien the master of language and communicating even made up a word for “the happy disaster” calling it eucatastrophe.

As artists who are Christians we are able to create a sacred space in time for others that accepts the long defeat of this life and yet also reflects the hope we have in Jesus.                                                      

I suppose in the end I was able to see very clearly this weekend that the “experts” are simply people a little further down the path, who are pointing out what they have learned.  Depending on their facility to talk about it, the depth of their self-awareness, the richness of their experience with Christ, and how well they tell their story, they may or may not be able to help someone else.   But there is no magic to it.

I also faced that no matter how much you may believe that you are creating something worthwhile, something more than “useless art” the tension exists that success for the artist, just like everything else in the world, and can be simplified down to being popular and cool. Yes, we’re all still living in a perpetual hell of high school.  Each of us has within us something unique to give, because we are gloriously different from one another, and yet sadly that doesn’t guarantee success.

How does One Succeed? These are the people who succeed: (mostly) Those that have a combination of skinny good looks (yes, even Christians idolize youth), an ability to communicate well with others and a willingness to do self-promote, to learn and work the system, a tireless belief in themselves and lastly a strong ego.  They are the ones that usually “make it.”  Yes, cynical me.  There are exceptions of course.

Downward Mobility of Christ

Ironically this success formula is nothing like what we Christians are called to, which is the downward mobility of Christ.

In the end I realized that I must be willing to do some of that self-promotion and there is no shame in it, if you don’t want to toil in obscurity.

But as it is equally imperative to create from an inner, original space.  And it must not, dare I say cannot, be motivated out of a desire to succeed–to reach the big time.  I must create from that place of absolute acceptance that I have received from God, the place of being loved by the Holy One.  God made only one of me, only one of you.  Do the thing he has given you, your creative work, out of that place.

Lay it down, yes your best work, as an offering to the Holy One and continue to create, write, dream, and give of your heart.

Not gazing out, or up toward the desire for success but looking down, setting it down as an offering to God. 

It may seem like you are giving away little pieces of your heart to just a few people here and there.  (Okay, I speak for myself when I say that.)

But I was encouraged this weekend.

I came away still believing that word followed by word, image by image, song by song, we are making sense of the world through our art.

Yes, we are to work

backward,

downward,

toward a perfection that is found only

in creating for the Holy One.

How to Be Alone

A poem and video about being alone.

IMPT. Stark and beautiful.  It holds a piece of my heart. (Except I don’t dance.)

Don’t be afraid to be alone!

A video by filmmaker Andrea Dorfman, and poet/singer/songwriter Tanya Davis. Davis wrote the beautiful poem and performed in the video which Dorfman directed, shot, animated by hand and edited. The video was shot in Halifax, Nova Scotia and was produced by Bravo!FACT.

On Motherhood, On Children

I’ll be the first to admit it.  I fight daily with the little devil on my shoulder.  That being tells me lies.

I feel it so vividly – the tensions of being a stay at home mom, a lack of validation in the culture at large for motherhood or stay at home parents, and the voice inside me telling me almost every day “It’s not enough! Do more, be significant, something special.”  A lot of my poetry recently has come out of that place.

God has reminded me, for some reason, of the truth that we never know whose mother we are — in that we don’t know who our children will become. If we knew that our sons or daughters, nieces or nephews, would grow up to be the next Barack Obama, or Madeleine L’Engle, Joan Chittister, or Scot McKnight, or Michelangelo, whomever, would we look at parenting, at mothering, differently?

They all had mothers.

Fathers.  Aunties and Uncles.

Your role in the life of a child is a role that only you can fulfill even though most days you likely consider it insignificant.

This post was inspired in some part by reading this.

Upward Mobility (a poem)

Earth ‘s crammed with heaven… 

But only he who sees, takes off his shoes.  – Elizabeth Barrett Browning

More than once, in fact
dozens of times in the Big Story of the Torah,
responding to God meant
falling face down on the ground.
Blinding light,
being pregnant with plain old
awe.
Take off your shoes kind of wonderment.
Because you’re on holy ground.

I am so unseeing.
Everything in me,
in my dusty, meager day to day corporeal living
roars something else.
At me. In me.  From me.  To me.
Lift yourself
up. Rise higher, get
above the next fellow.
Upward mobility. Show
your stuff. Your smarts. Your
talent and creativity.
The world is shouting in my ear.

Then I close the door, and
find within, in
my paltry worship, my measly human love.
All I have is a quickening heartbeat, throwing off
the chasing anxiety.
All I want is a falling face down on the ground, kind of awe.
When was the last time I felt
astonishment in God?
A breathed in, have to close my eyes
star struck, stomach lurching,
take off my shoes, because I’m on holy ground

kind of amazement of my God?

All I want.

When was the last time?

 

let go (a poem)


let go

 

To part with sarcasm’s drips, acid

burning on my tongue, corrosive and scalding

a hole in my soul;

I know the true beneficiary, me.

 

Hatred’s Sweet Kiss (a poem)

Hatred’s sweet kiss deceives,

leaving me battered, shattered, and alone.

Only holy soul work undoes

the damage of deep aching;

ravages of original toil,

wanting to be God.

Logic & Imagination

Be kind for everyone you meet is fighting a huge battle. — Phylo of Alexandria

I am still processing time I spent today, alongside my mother and a lot of mostly grey haired women, at the Holy Wisdom monastery. And my ten-year old turns eleven tomorrow, so life will be a little full over the next twenty-four hours with ice-cream cake and video games,  rides here and there, and the flow of life as a mother of four.

While I mull on what I have learned, I thought you might enjoy seeing the list of the top ten articles on my blog this month.  A few are recent work, but I was surprised to see that several are oldies but goodies like What’s a Woman of Leisure?, On Parenting Deeply and Well, and the ebb and flow.

Title Views
Home page 400
If you Read Nothing Else from me. Read this. ((On healing)) 72
What’s a Woman of Leisure? (Not that you asked) 69
Can I “forget” that I’m a Woman while at Church? Forgetting and Forgiving 55
On Parenting Deeply and Well 46
Perfect Practice (A poem about Lent) 45
My Sobriety and My Sin 44
To Lent or not to Lent, that is the Question 42
the ebb and flow 39
Faith Transforms Me, Sometimes. 37
Uncluttered, Exposed and Present: Touching the Unknown (a poem) 36

It is an incredible honor to know that you all are reading and walking with me.

My Sobriety and My Sin

“… And lately I wonder if Christians aren’t the most miserable of addicts–and if the fact of our faith itself isn’t part of the reason.  After all, aren’t we supposed to be new creations in Christ, freed from the power of sin? Because we tend to think of addiction this way—strictly as a moral failing—we try to pull ourselves up by our spiritual bootstraps. We pray harder, repent more fervently, and fight temptation until we’re blue in the face.”  – Sober Boots, a blog by Heather Kopp

After reading Heather’s thoughts last night I read several of the comments from those who had extremely judgmental view of a person’s addiction recovery.

I was left with a hollow feeling inside.  I found myself saying that addiction is not a sin.  But then, thinking long and hard about it this morning, I realized that although I have never dealt with it there was an element of sin involved in my alcoholism.

I am always helped by talking to my husband Tom.  I sought his comfort in the question, “It wasn’t sin, right, that I became an alcoholic? It wasn’t sin, was it?  Is it?”  He’s one of the least judgmental people I know, so when Tom said “Yes, it is in part it was sin, you had a choice .  You cannot discount free will.” I had to listen.

(And then we launched into a wonderful conversation about James 3, our hierarchies of sin and the power of our tongue.  “With it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in the likeness of God. From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers these things ought not to be so.”  James 3, ESV)

How is it that I fell into addiction?

How is it that I am sober today?  My sobriety has taken inner strength of will and conviction. Was it God that has given me the strength to remain sober for three and a half years? 

How much of my sobriety was tangled up in my conversion path, my faith walk, the gentle work of the Holy Spirit?

In some ways living free of addiction is a form of conversion, as Alyce M. McKenzie says, a turnaround from bondage to a self-destructive behavior to freedom that comes when we commit ourselves to the power of God.

But honestly I don’t recall some grand transaction, or moment, whereby I asked God to help me become sober and whamo I was healed.  No, it was much, much slower.  It was through the conviction of the Holy Spirit and a final ultimatum-of-sorts made by my husband converging within twenty-four hours, that I made a choice to finally quit.

But the conviction had been building for some time – though choosing sobriety took years.

I was pretty sure I was addicted to alcohol when my sisters and I attended the family program at Hazeldon at the request of my mom.  It was there that I learned for the first time about  the illness of addiction, more importantly about the brain pathways of an addict, about codependency, about the hell we create for others by our words and sarcasm, about the strength sometimes to be found in Al Anon and Alcoholics Anonymous.  (**I say more about AA below)  After meeting with a doctor there, acknowledging my depression and how much and how often I was drinking, she said they could justifiably commit me to the residential program.  But I couldn’t do it — couldn’t accept the need to quit totally.  Didn’t believe it was that bad.  I went home and spent the next five years or so on a slow decline.  Not every day at that point.  Not drinking to black out, yet.  Not even really in that bad of shape, but an alcoholic for sure.

How many nights over the next few years did I go to sleep almost blacked out drunk.  Only just able to stumble to bed – falling into the protective  down covers, pounding head on the soft accepting pillows, heart aching with the pain of it all. Thinking – praying – crying out to God.

Making promises.  Promising that tomorrow would be different.  Promising myself that tomorrow I would not buy  any wine.  Tomorrow I would not drink myself to a disoriented, forgotten, insensible place.  Hopeful that tomorrow would be different, only to fall into the same habit, experiencing the same amnesia as I was purchasing more alcohol.

The psychologist and spiritual counselor Gerald May in his book called Addiction and Grace defines addiction as “any compulsive, habitual behavior that limits the freedom of human desire.”

I found myself, day after day, month after month, year after year, for more than five years being fairly certain that I was an addict and yet choosing the same path.  I thought I could be a social drinker.  I didn’t want to stop, not really, for a long time.   Wine and other alcohol was like a lover.  I look back now knowing it clearly, seeing it objectively that it was an idol, yes, more important than anything else.  Alcohol was my reason for living.  I gave it the space and place in my life much more important than my health, or the welfare of my family, or my commitment to God. So, yes, there is an element of choice.  And in that free choice it was a sin.

But sadly as Christians we have a hierarchy of sin – infidelity and addiction being at the top.  Why?  I suppose it doesn’t even matter ultimately.  They were my choices, though compelled by the illness in my brain and the broken state of my heart.   I made them.   I chose.

And where was God?  Well, I stopped seeking him.  I closed off from him the part of me that was an addict.  I cannot fully describe how I lived with myself spiritually in those years except to say that I was numb even while being wracked with guilt.  I was self-medicating.  I was depressed.  I felt hopeless.  I turned away from God. This is a poem I wrote at one point in my recovery, titled Days Without God.

she walked away from hope,
traveled the road of unkept promises.
and god was far away.

days without number

she ran down that road,
of fleeting pleasures
and god turned away
unable to see
unable to be with her.

though she can never deny going,
after a time, she turned
and walked back.
she was broken and bleeding.

the moment she turned back
she felt the presence
and then, god forgave.

For these choices I had to ask my husband’s forgiveness.  Someday I will do the same with my children when they are old enough to understand.  From the friends who lived beside me and saw the destruction of alcohol in my life, I covet their forgiveness.  Family members who saw and lived and wondered and were wounded by me, they too I need forgiveness and grace.

I live with the knowledge of my walking away from God.  I live with the knowledge that I did that every day, I chose it.  I cling to God now.  I relish his forgiveness and I acknowledge my sin.  His grace is enough.

To those accusers, the ones that throw out the accusation of “sin!” like Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter, I say this. No matter who we are or what we have done, in Christ we are given a new life of repentance and dignity where there is no place for legalism and guilt.   This is a life of grace.   Only God knows our hearts.   He is there with us, if we cry out to him.  But recovery, that is a long difficult walk and by no means something that just happens by surrendering to God.  I know this.

But I also know that He walks it with us if we ask him.  Look at John 8, Jesus asking where are your accusers?  “Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. “Go now and leave your life of sin.”

Do I know how that transaction works, ultimately?  Not really, but it is for me now found  in the daily choice to be sober.  Did Jesus think she’d be free of sin them then on?  Nope, not likely and there was parts of her life she had to choose to walk away from.  Alcoholics must do this in order to recover.

I cannot cast stones at others, no matter their “sin.” Grace and peace is found in the knowledge that I am not judged either.

“… and I’m still learning how to hack and slash through this beautiful jungle of grace.”  Stephen

MH

** I do not work my sobriety with AA (Alcoholics Anonymous).  I don’t personally find AA all that helpful, though for a time I was greatly encouraged by attending a weekly meeting with women.  I walked into that room and experienced like I never have in my life a level of understanding, empathy and acceptance.  No condemnation.  We were all alcoholics and other forms of addicts.  No pointing of fingers.  In a way that the Church doesn’t seem to be able to live out — the idea that we’re all sinners together in this mess of a world.  All sinners.  All saints.  All walking the path together.  Why is it that (some) Christians are the most judgmental of all?

I longed for (and still sometimes do) church to be a safe place for me to go and find help with my recovery, but my church at least doesn’t offer anything for addicts.  Not sure why when they have divorce-care, and grief-care, and cancer-care among many other kids of “care.”  It does feel like they are strangely silent on this.  I was helped by an addiction specific counselor, fortunate enough to have it covered by insurance, and spent more than six months in weekly therapy working through many aspects of my addiction as well as learning about the disease’s power.

Lent: My Agenda or God’s?

I am looking to Lent as a way to make space. In our cluttered congested lives we have no space for God. Then we act almost indignant that he won’t speak (I’m talking to myself here.)  So often I have an agenda with God and even in the practicing of Lent.  I can’t hear what he wants to say.

What if Lent was a way of creating more space for God?  While knowing he is preparing us for his death and for his resurrection.

Instead of being ruled by social media.  I could read all the day long the blogs and whatnot of people I like and respect.  But what if I could make space for God?

Because at the end of the day, if I don’t make space for the Holy One, I will be empty. Bereft.  Spiritually limp and disbelieving. I will not have done the simple profound work of inquiring of God what he wants to say. Can it be that simple?  That so often I don’t pray.  I don’t ask.  I stay too busy.

And it feels then, like he’s silent.

But I have a feeling it is simply that I was too distracted to be still enough to listen.  To recognize him.

So the giving up of things is good if we allow the Holy One to fill our spaces of fear, regret, pain, selfishness, anger, pride, shame.  He wants to take them.  He is leading us, to the cross.

There is no room for his Voice. The way I create space is likely giving things up.

Stop looking to others to fill me, inspire me, motivate me.

I want to hear from my maker, so I should let go of all the other voices. If I can bravely crack open that space in my day.

“Let the things of this world fall away so the soul can fall in love with God. God only comes to fill the empty places and kenosis is necessary – to empty the soul to know the filling of God.”   ––  Ann Voskamp

It isn’t really anything I do, or don’t do, that matters.  Not really.

It’s making space for the Holy One.   Waiting for his filling up.  Asking for his agenda with me.

“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast.”  — Ephesians 2:8,9

Uncluttered, Exposed and Present: Touching the Unknown (a poem)

I carried so much hurt
a world of injury, so much so that
often I couldn’t breathe.
my chest ached of it. I couldn’t
hear the spirit, blowing windy about me.
wouldn’t heal, my open sores were evident to all.
I      had      no      space left inside
for the mystical, Holy
One to speak.

Making space for God sounds so suspect
(as if)
even though,
often
I was thinking
if God is there, why won’t he just talk
to me?

Then     I    let   go.   I let my fear fly free.
Then the glorious, lavish days
came, spent
listening.
days I look forward to sitting, there.  waiting
a while
setting aside the albatross.
Let it go, though
the grip
I had was strong,
and wrong
The scars ran deep
the pain furrowed my brow and at my core
there was only sorrow.
Now, I touch the Unknown
I am uncluttered, exposed
and present,
open for God to speak.