Saturday, May 14, 2011

Festering & Pestering

I'm learning more and more that what's toxic and festering must be spoken out loud. Audre Lorde has taught me this more than any/other author. She and Frida Kahlo pester (not fester) me often. Both were incredibly creative and transformative. They took bullshit pain/trauma oppression and transformed their experience of those things into works of art. Courage. Fearless. Both of them. And so on days like today, I recall their legacies...and then I write. I write so I don't internalize the negativity. I write so that my body is free. I write to exorcise the lies that I (sometimes unconsciously) inherit by living in this unconscious/traumatized culture. I write so that I don't perpetuate the lies and hurt people. This is active/intentional channeling of toxicity in an effort to transform it. My prayer in this is for people to feel less alone (in the act of receiving my words) and empowered to actively/intentionally channel toxicity so it doesn't kill them either.  

This morning during a brain-storming session at a council retreat I had to sit and listen to leaders of my church talk about "Open and Affirming" conversations as if they were that: conversations. As if gay bodies weren't in the room. Like: you want the luxury of a conversation about my person-hood and then want to congratulate yourself about it in my presence? Um, no. Reminds me of what I felt earlier in the week when the PCUSA decided to ordain openly gay ministers. It's never too late to do the right thing. I am glad about that decision. And there's a part of me that's like, ummmm just because you decided/figured-out that gay people aren't second class citizens doesn't mean you're righteous. You're repenting. That's different. Don't self-congratulate so quickly. Similarly: there's nothing to be sung about when white people actually acknowledge racism. That doesn't somehow erase the lie we've been telling ourselves for thousands of years. Realizing a lie doesn't absolve any of the pain caused by that lie, nor does it mean you're no longer enacting the lie. It just means you can stop being an unconscious asshole now and start working towards honest relations in life. That's it. What's radical and worth celebrating is flipping power and privilege over for good, which requires consistent acts over one's life time (that often get socially punished) of great risk and sacrifice by those who have power and privilege.

Oh: and if I had the capacity, which I of course do not, I would eternally ban the word "mission" from Christian discourse. (My next blog will probably be about this: just fyi.)

Rant done. Peace out.
EJ

Thursday, May 12, 2011

Bloody Lightning: A Prayer of Confession and Petition











Menstruation is privilege.
It is the possibilities of bleeding out
what is on the threshold of life/death,
thereby re-membering one's placement in the cycle
of birth/collapse.

It is privilege to participate in this
recycling system that is psychically and sexually rooted
in the body
in the body
in the body.

Last night I woke up twice. There was lightning in the sky,
thunder clapped, ripping through silence, awakening sleepy-heads
to the shameless power of nature that can do whatever It wills/wants.
Both times, my legs and sheets were covered in black blood.
I wasn't ill-prepared. She does what she wills. Shamelessly.

This morning I read that my current place of employment
hosted and organized minstrel shows, a legacy of
essentializing brown bodies
exploiting brown bodies
...for "entertainment"...
profiteering off of brown bodies
doing violence/rape/murder to brown bodies--
that legacy runs in the halls of my office and
runs through the blood in my veins.

This morning I recall my father's pastoral legacy of
using women,
dismissing women,
silencing women,
impregnating and abandoning women and then
lying about women to women--
that legacy flows through the blood in my veins.

And so this morning i thank
my body
my body
my body
for bleeding out and expressing death/collapse honestly
in ways that my job and my culture will not.

I am a student of this black blood
this luminous darkness
   (to use Rev. Dr. Howard Thurman's theological language)
that incarnates honestly the need to purge and express
no matter how painful
    (and yes, this belly cramps and collapses on itself every month, painfully)
what has not brought life,
what is painful and bleeding,
what needs to die.

Legacies of white supremacy and racial hatred
patriarchy and woman-hatred,
take your cue.
In the speaking of your legacy in this/my body,
in the honest confession that you
do not bring life and
that you need to die--
be transformed,
be recycled into truth that is life-giving, life affirming, and life-sustaining,
be gone from your current dis/embodiments,
be incarnated life and begin
with
this/my body
this/my body
this/my body.

Thursday, May 5, 2011

Internalized Oppression










When you love what you are
and come into contact with others
who are what you are
but don’t love what you/they are (together)

it can be maddening.

…particularly if you’ve had to
rip that self love from the sharp teeth of
all-consuming, triple headed monsters that
seek the exploitation & annihilation of your self
for the perpetuation of violent fiction,
the myth of a bottomless belly,
the myth of never ending hunger that must be satiated
by someone who is willing to be treated like something.

…particularly if you’ve had to
tenderly and patiently patchwork quilt that
self love back into/onto your body
with creative threading skills
that don’t always appear coherent to the external eye,
with nurturing touch
 that feels foreign and clumsy at first,
and with compassionate placement
 that takes incredible discipline of the always-suspect intuition.

It can be down-right infuriating

to encounter those who do not love those things you share,
who do not love those things you are together,
and thereby do not reflect back nor deepen
your endurance, victory and worth-fighting-for-ness;
who instead recycle the myths—with their bodies—
solidify some fiction—with their incongruities—
that keep your kind hunted, chewed up, swallowed and spat back up
because after all, it turns out
that monster’s hunger is always bigger than its stomach.

…and yet…
no matter how maddening & infuriating
it might be—this lack of love—
if you love what you are
there is no sense in resenting those
who don’t love what you are in common
because, if it’s really common, even if—no,
especially if
its still in the teeth of hungry monsters,
it’s still what you are, still what you love and
only by lovingly beckoning it out of the mouth of devouring lies
and into the truth of its inherent & unconditional rightness
can you truly claim an authentic self-love, the one
you’ve been living & dying to enact all the days of your breathing,
the one you’re willing to sacrifice for and wait for
and not give up on just because you’re tired.

This is why forgiveness is
still the most generous act
in the recognition of one’s love not loving what’s loveable in common/together,
because if love is love, even deferred love-in-return—
even bad behavior that mocks and spits at the loving-self
because of internalized oppression—
cannot dissuade it. 

Wednesday, May 4, 2011

Traveling

I don't know why
traveling always seems like such a vague notion
when it offers such concrete freedom.

like
perspective
connection
healing
awakening

I feel like writing myself a note for the future:
break away more
reconnect to the places you used to be more
discover new spots more
move more.

Next time that stuckness creeps in
and I'm spinning and nauseous
from my own chasing-tail game--
someone tell me to book a flight,
or a train, or to get in my car and just go.

Freedom knows...