Desert Miners

Something deep is being dug up and what guilt and shame would label whining

grace is renaming as mining. The desert years searched and sifted

scorched earth burning away until what is lifted and remaining

is a self that never left,

but was hidden, like that little girl in the closet

plugging ears and singing songs to shut out the fears that never drifted away,

that shifted to stay.

These are the new days not fresh and unstained but believing

that what remains is hope. Like coffee circles on the table top they loop

around the heart and head to declare the things we have seen

will not be made unseen, but the stains don't make us unclean.

We are those that survived and figured ourselves the survivor

without seeing that we have a revivor.

Emptiness was the lied assumption of what was left but one revived is filled full of breath.

We've called out for shade, for rest, gasped for air, screeched its unfair,

torn into this dessert dust filled with bones. Our bones, worn marrow splintered with new breath.

We're the living remnant, and though we've seen death

its cold socket eyes can not steal whats left

because its new and its shared and its proof of the fallen

taking steps on new feet that have been call'n to walk and tell the stories

And they'll be pain and they'll be laughter. Truth is no stranger to disaster.

And we'll make more miners in the desert

finding breath in their bones

mining flesh out of stones.

The desert, again

I am not exactly sure how I ended up here again but: "tada" I am sitting once again, albeit cross legged, in the desert. But this time it doesn't feel profound like the Montana dance tour that was a cracked wasteland inches from soul quenching rains. Or the Lenten sands that felt noble and liturgically endowed with poetry. Nope this feels dry, and gritty. And I want some shade... seriously anytime little fig tree.

A Fish in the Pond

Sunday mornings for me are sacred. I attend a church service in the evenings, but the mornings are my true sabbath. I sleep in, fiddle around in my kitchen usually producing some new variation of scone (this morning is was apricot ginger) to go with my coffee, and then load up my book bag for a trip to the park. It is my liturgy of rest.
My park, which yes I have come to feel a sense of ownership over, is a lush grouping of willows, maples and birches surrounding a small lake that by any other name is really a glorified pond. I situate myself on a bench on a little dock that is almost hidden by bulrushes and breathe. Peace becomes a tangible substance, it fills my nostrils and dances across my skin like the breeze that skitters across the back of my neck. I am content with my book, my scone, and my coffee.
But the dock is not as hidden as I thought and soon I am joined by a small herd of children followed shortly by their shepherding parents: a father who turns to me apologetically while the mother focuses on gripping the waistband of a toddler who seems determined to plunge head first off the dock in pursuit of a duck. A dog appears,a warm old golden retriever, than 2 more little lap dogs with bulging eye balls. Their owners arrive, a pair of typical middle aged east van hippies, the type who now have the money to afford shopping at expensive organic stores but still insist on wearing clothes from their teenaged wardrobes. My little dock has begun to feel like a 10' by 10' microcosm: ducks, dogs, hippies, and children darting around in choreographed precision. I feel separate, as though I am the invisible narrator allowed to paint them unto a canvas they are ignorant of. As quickly as they came they all walk away down the weathered boards and back unto the trail to join the buzz of the park.
I return back to my book, I think about God and faith and family. I sip my coffee and make a note to buy gum.
Then my second wave of visitors arrive, a boy and his father. They are quiet. They do not announce or apologize for their arrival, we simply acknowledge each other, a quick glance and acceptance of one anothers presence. The boy unravels a fishing line and props up a zip lock bag filled with God-knows-what kind of brown squirming bait. The father drifts back observing his child from a distance, finding his own sacredity in the grey skys of this Sunday morning. I read, the father breathes, and the boy fishes. We are a silent happy trio.
I hear water splashing and look to see something moving in the plastic container next to my little fisherman. I ask him if I can look, somewhat shyly he lets me squat next to him and see his 3 tiny fish splashing around. I am shocked both by their shining brilliance gasping in the shallow bowl, and by the fact that he actually caught anything. I ask him what he will do with them -- half afraid he intends on frying up these 3 inch creatures and ingesting their pond scum-- but no he will release them. I want to keep chatting, or ask to fish with him, but I return to my bench and my book.
The baseball diamond in the back corner of the park has a new sound system which the little league has decided to use to blare beach boys tunes, when it switches to a vibrato laced 'O Canada' by some aspiring local I know it is time to leave. I abandon my fisherman and his father, I feel like I should say goodbye or wish him luck but I don't. I walk past the 8 year baseball players, the gathering of taiko drummers, a little girl just learning to ride her bike, willows,birches,maples, back to my home.
Sometimes I wonder if being an artist means I will get crazier the more I hone my craft. That I will see more of what others ignore and care less about what they do. For instance I went to the park today in my Uggs, in June, because I knew the warmer my feet were the longer I would stay. My face is naked from make-up and wisps of my hair refuse to stay in my half-hearted braid.
Perhaps I am already the crazy artist. I think I am okay with that.

This Storm Borne Frailty

Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow!You cataracts and hurricanes, spout
Till you have drenched our steeples, drowned the cocks!(King Lear 3.2.1)

The rains, as you might have guessed, have continued. The storms that come , now have the cutting edge of colds winds that send the pelting rain in gravity defying directions. When I parked my little car outside of the studio for Shakespeare class last night I was half afraid it swim away on me. Oh but how delicious it is to have Shakespeare and storms together. The night begged for one of us actors to go screech Lear's soliqueys into the roaring storm...none of us did of course, we would've gotten wet, ugh. But the drama of the storm, even when safely indoors, rages on inside me.

I, perhaps sixty years too early, have gone walking in the storm. I have those deep emotional cracks and rages of Lear's storm blowing at me with a force that has torn aside pre-exsisting foundations and confidences. I feel half wild, ready to tear at my clothing and run headlong into the very storms I have spent my life avoiding. I feel dangerous and released...but then I put on my dress shoes and head off to my 9-5.

This is my conflict.

I am quietly raging unsure of at what, or whom, but walking edges of cliffs - silently. My silence comes from the other side of my storm, the warm air, that reminds me to nurture and love, to cling to the responsibility and leadership that I have walked in my whole life. And all of this feels unnoticed -- the glory of acting Shakespeare is that when a character feels something, we see it, we hear it, it is the external and heightened representation of our internal swirling chaos's. While we may think of doing something, these characters do it, they scream, they murder, they betray, they fuck...and occasionally make love. Its raw, its visceral, its the storm inside us.

In the end Lear has walked in the storm, ultimately, to face himself -- "Who is it that can tell me who I am?" (1.4.230), he sees betrayals, loyalties, sorrows, and himself. Now I am not saying my coming of age crisis's is the equivalent of this tragic blind dying man, clutching his dead daughter in his arms, while he howls into the night; er at least lets hope not.

But this passion, this intensity, the high stakes is a storm I -- well none of us-- can avoid. One only hopes that enlightenment and not destruction comes from our journey into night. But, that the pelting pitiless rains expose more than madness allowing us to walk on into morning.

Bitten

"Because grieving is drowning -- suspended"
Death is a scar that marks us all. We wear it on our hearts; hidden by layers of blood vessels and tissue, it lies on our central organ a memento mori. Death and life seperated by inhalations, as cells are reborn and depleted in the steady rise and fall of our breath.
I have two peers who are currently in the midst of grieving. One just lost his mother to a slow battle with terminal lung disease and the other is currently living with his dying mother-in-law. Their grief is so loud it beats in their ears with the same thrumming pulse a child about to be discovered in hide and seek feels.
I don't understand death. Like my peers I have also known it intimately and tragically...but I still don't understand it. The death I have seen lacks the dignity and peace Sunday School painted it to be. Its visceral, desperate, and cruel. It leaves a web half woven and the survivors crawl about trying to patch a pattern they do not have the instructions for.
The scar is not just on our hearts. Creation itself is cracked; each blade of grass flitting in the wind, the rough grains of sand that rub each other raw, and the waters that strain against the shores, feel death. The immortal rendered mortal does not simply forget its heritage.
For once upon a time there was a boy and a girl. And they played where they should not have, and ate what was not theirs, and a pain filled their chests and they were changed. And we were changed. And it all changed.
I too have a thrumming pulse in my head. Grief that screams at me above the crowded noise. My chest heaves in a pain that feels like it could rip me in two. I feel the scar. A rough scar with two perfect punctures. For once upon a time a snake coiled up around us and slithered things in our ears and as we listened it slyly sunk its fangs into our chests, and we were changed.

Lent

Because I Do Not Hope to Know
Because I do not hope to know
The season of Lent has become, for me, a season of acceptance. A time when my strivings, insecurities, and vanities, are exposed like carcasses in the wasteland, and I simply am. Lent is the desert. Lent is waiting. Lent is letting go.
I am a latecomer to liturgy. My Pentecostal upbringing,while rife with memory verses and songs that utilized the word “hosanna”, taught me nothing of the liturgical
practices of the Christian faith. So, when at university I became aware of the rich history of the church, I was fascinated. The ability to integrate the relational and often emotion-based faith of my childhood with an intellectual and academically oriented church tradition was incredibly liberating. Liturgy in an age of experience-based faith felt wild, even rebellious. Some kids do drugs; I read Christifedelis
Laici.
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still
It was in this period that I first experienced Lent. I vowed to write in my journal every day, commit to disciplined devotions, and I expected, like some crazed Essene in the desert, to be blown away by daily if not hourly revelations of God. It didn’t work out too well – I, in my normal “Striving McStriverson” way gave myself rules in achieving closeness with God. I found instead a sense of isolation and distance.
I had created an image of God that matched my own limitations, and in that control was blinded.Lent is letting go. Lent is waiting. Lent is the desert.
A couple of years ago I decided to go to Christ Church Cathedral downtown for the Ash Wednesday sunrise service. I had just moved to the city, was pretty much jobless, and the beginning of Lent seemed to offer hope that change was coming. But on the way to the church I got completely lost in Vancouver traffic, rather upset at my new roommate (who was trying to “un-lost” us via Google directions), and missed
the entire service.Lent is waiting. Lent is the desert. Lent is letting go – and not flipping off the guy who just cut you off in the Cathedral parking lot.
Calm and distressed
Torn and most whole
Shall these bones live?
Shall these bones live?
That same year I got the chance to take a road trip to a four star hotel built into the Monterey Bay in California.It was a week filled with stillness and rest. One night while I doing my devotions on the balcony of my hotel room, I felt calmness consume me. In the midst of the unknown, alongside the uncertainty of where life was headed I felt a penetrating peace. The constant buzzing of my brain slowed and I sat listening in the darkness to the crashing of the waves below. I heard a pod of whales sounding off to each other across the ocean bay. To me at that moment, it was
the sound of hope, of the eternal, the sound of letting go.
Lord I am not Worthy,
Lord I am not Worthy,
But speak the word only
Last year I managed to make it on time to the Cathedral for the imposition of ashes. The priest smeared the oily charcoal of burnt palm fronds in a cross on my forehead, and quietly repeated, “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.” For me the black smear on my forehead (which was hilariously perceived as dirt and continually attempted to be rubbed off all day by the dancers I worked with) was a reminder, not that I was different – but that I was the same.It was a reminder that I come from dust, and that I will return to it. That in that same dust-derived form Christ came, roamed the desert and lived, walked amongst us and loved, and stretched out his arms and died. In Lent we wait,we wait for the celebration of the incarnation -- of dust
bearing life. Lent is accepting the finite. Lent is admitting I don’t know. Lent is letting go.


Elliot, Thomas Stearn. Ash Wednesday http://www.msgr.ca/msgr-7/ash_wednesday_t_s_eliot.htm

God's Flash Photography

"Its silent just the crickets and my breathing,
and the God above is practicing his flash photography."-Sheree Plett

I have always been awed by lighting storms. They illuminate the opaque black night instantaneously, sheet lightening revealing the grass swaying in the fields and outlining the naked branches of trees like children caught in a game of hide and seek.

Like these lightening storms of exposure, the weight of emotion hits me unexpectedly. Moments where light captures me, reaches me, and reveals all I am for a moment. It is as though my numb exterior is uncovered for an instant and I feel everything. I feel exposed, broken, and weak. A child running from shadows.

The art of feeling I believe takes practices…
and I am out of practice.

Much of how I understand God, is based in what I feel -- and as one prone to numbness, this makes God seem as elusive at times as the morning fog. Much of life passes around me unfelt, like a stream past a boulder. I am solid and unmoving.

Until, God practices his flash photography in my life. In those brief glimpses I experience life to all its extremes, emotions without the corners cut. Reflected in the negative is a split second of seeing myself, of seeing God, of feeling the unfelt storms of my past.

I feel. I feel. I feel.

And God, not elusive but constant, is the one with the flash bulb chasing the shadows into the night.