Featured

Baptism without the rain

Welcome to New Mexico 

Now you may think that it's dusty 
You may not notice it's beauty at first 
But I hope dear friend after we spent so much time in the cold together that you can also see the beauty beyond snow in these dry lands

Certain people think that the desert is always a biblical metaphor representing a culture of scarcity. 

But in this land, I found abundance. So ignore the grime, though it too is part of the culture and I find beauty in it and this dust as well.

Look to the star speckled skies on the range, scattered by sagebrush and distantly the smell of juniper trees from tijeras. hope you see the beauty in it

I hope you get a chance to swing dance in the heights. Those lovely Tuesday nights. Swing jazz and pop fusion. And then head to frontier or sonic in your 50s dress then stay up to late on a school night and cross the sewer tunnels underneath UNM

Have you seen the faroles as they light up those early December nights? And tasted the posole while singing carols with your friends?

And then the wisdom that is here? Have you met all of these people? From Yale to sunflower lane?

What do you know now of water if life and the marigold parades? What do you know of banned books? Religion and politics? Something if you’ve seen the murals?

I hope you wonder at the trumpet vine scattered across the barb wire fences. And when you wonder at the weeds of the bosque: morning glories silver leaf nightshade and cottontail as too. Have you sat under the keva laced with wisteria. Or smelled the patchouli incense in the wind?

I’m thankful that you came with me on this journey, and for the people who’ve already been on this journey with me. Because I can never explain nor tell you. Just how meaningful this land is to me. I have felt more love here than I have found for most my life.

In the lavender skies there Sylvia lies. Do you gasp at the sandias elm trees and desert roses and ponderosa pine. I hope you see what I see when you gaze upon the range. I hope you melt as the red sun sighs upon the hot horizons lines

Beyond the blue mountains, in the distance, I’ve found a home.

An accident of destiny drawn to dream in the enchanted state

My friends joke that I say I’m from everywhere. It’s true. I believe that places imprint upon your soul and that we have homes in many places. Everywhere I go, I always say I’m coming home. But in New Mexico, it’s true. I will always keep returning to New Mexico. Maybe, it’s entrapped me, maybe it’s enchanted me. I found love here

Lands often overlooked. Yet the fabric of dust wisteria and pollen is woven into the sinews of our communal souls.

NM doesn’t have the oceans, lush green forest nor giant cities to attract.
We have impoverished mural painters, beaders and street singers. The equestrian suburbs in peralta and bosque farms

Odd southwestern city with your unmistakable summer sunsets. From above, the lacey brown topography looks like mars with some green polka dots.

When you look at the sagebrush and palo santo. there’s a spirituality about it in the pink clouds clear skies heat lightning and vespers.

Elm trees Douglas fur oak and evergreens ponderosa pines and juniper the smells the tastes the spiciness of it all the chili peppers.

Have you been to Santa Fe? Seen the art and watermelon mountains? Heard the grito and loud guitars and flamenco dancers in the plaza square? Now as much a New Mexico tradition, as it was foreign, far from here?

Have you been to Carlsbad? Beheld the caverns and the batts?

Have you been to bosque farms and seen the horses run: cholla, Zia Ozzie and serenade as the roam across the fields eating alfalfa by the rio and then trot across the county square?

And maybe I’m trying romanticise it; but I can tell you the ugly too. That’s easy to see. Rather, I hope you see the beauty. When you hike the mountains and walk the sandy trails through the desert grasses do you notice all the colors all the colors within? Do you see how many shades of green and brown there are? Did you ever notice before how beautiful brown and green could be? How wonderful and how insane that we are taught that deserts are a metaphor for scarcity. New Mexico to me has always symbolized abundance
New Mexico casts a spell upon us all and as long as there is love here, I will always return to the land that returned so much to me.

I left the songs of the Windy City for the desert when I was just a fragment of myself. New Mexico made me who I am

Emaciated and barren I walked onto seemingly barren land. A hundred and ten pounds. I walked through the doors of these Pueblo homes

How odd this architecture! How odd all of it was.
But now as I drive down these roads, dust and grime and beauty. Memory roams.

Dear friend, I’m so thankful that you came with me on this adventure. Returning to the land that made me who I am. I’m so grateful that I get to share this part with you of me. This part of me that you had not met yet

We met as girls. Here I arrived, ignorant and humbled, I became a woman. You met a girl who is strong, resilient and fierce in her own way, but one that was trickling away.

From an aerial view this land is full of cracks from above. We joke that it looks like it needs hand lotion or Mars for all it’s craters.

I was a girl, a hundred and ten pounds, skinny little thing, I’d pass out with the rain.

So how can I explain to you? How can I tell you just how much these people and this land means?

Dirty roads, but love so freely give. Didn’t cost me a quarter nor a ring.

You can’t understand me without understanding the places that I have walked and those people I have held.

So welcome to New Mexico the land that heals. The land that healed me

The place that held a fading child and brought her to her knees

The people that I’ve met have taught me so much of love. I can never tell you. I can never explain

A baptism without rain

Baptized by the dust. This land that means so much to me

A baptism without the rain.

Baptism by the dust.

Featured

Wheelchairs, Crutches, And Heels.

Wheelchairs, Crutches, And Heels. 
 Quick Take My Heels!
 He’s Calling The Police. 
 My Flats Are In The Backseat. 
 Please Take My Goddamn Keys. 
 
My Sister Drove A Sports Car
 The Most Mobility She Had 
 And With Her Sweet Long Curly Waves 
 She Looked Like A Movie Queen 
 My Sister Loved To Dream 
 It Was Her Joy To Drive. 
 Handi Stickers Make Her Cry  

 But On On Mother's Day 
 This Old Man 
 He Said My Sister Stole Some Land 
 Mustard Dress With Honey Curls 
 He Saw Venus In A Whirl
 This Old Man Said Strip The Heels.
 Glowing Green Clover Eyes With Swirls Of Caramel Clouds 
 Beauty Was Her Disguise
 Though Much Misfortune Held Her Eyes
 Beautiful Broken Girl Unseen. 
 Tossed By The World Without Relief 
 Does Anyone See You?
 Does Anyone Care?
 About The Pain You Always Bear

 Three Times A Month 
 These Old Man Say 
 To Strip The Heels 
 And Keep Her Sun At Bay
 For Beautiful Girls Can’t Be In Pain 
 And Spanish Girls With Speeding Cars 
 Are Liars Don’t Ya See--

 The Old Men Jealous For Her Beauty 
 Try To Damn and Don Her In Her Grief 
 Until She Falls In Front Of Them 
 Or Unless Shes In Her Splints 
 They Pull Up On At Her Windows 
 And Spit At Her Glass 

 Not All Disabilities Are Always Visible 
 Some Come And Go 
 They Don't Relent 
 And People Think That Beauty 
 Means A Lack Of Pain 
 Or That Those Pained Can Not Be Beautiful 

 For How Could They Bear The Rain?

Nunca se quita. Never Quit

Perhaps, thoughts of sadness do not exist in us, but outside of ourselves.

It’s sometimes difficult for us to express our affectation. Emotions exist in many languages and expressive cultures. Yet, in this world we are survivors. Let us learn to love deeper. Perhaps, our sorrows and twisting paths only occur to amass our encounters and crossings with those we found love with.

No, these intrusive ideations are disillusioned. We have gifts left to transmit. We are, after-all, bearers of light and of life.

God, we pray for purer hearts, so that we may experience this life more fully, more holy with our family and friends. We ask that you guard all those who suffer and protect us each night. Let us love more clearly, and see the others with more sympathy. As we try to survive the destruction and chaos of this world we live in, let us also remember to love ever more profoundly.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

1 Corinthians 13 4-7

These simple things

Your first expressions…. your silly faces, smiles and hugs surpass the beauty of those things we have ordained with marked complexity. Your simple eyes, endowed with grace and smallest utterances bestow your mother’s eyes with smooth silk threads. Beads of light braided into your small head, your curls are graced with goodness. A mothers love and your innocence. These simple things illuminate the chasms that we can not calm.

Lady Liberty

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

I’m making a conscious effort to post more uplifting content (though for the time being that has not been my own poems, but rather my lived experiences and some shared sonic complements. I saw her this past weekend! Lady Liberty in all her glory. Thus, I’m sharing a snapshot of her, and a lovely choral piece based on her inscription and politicized sonically through the composition’s texture, Have a blessed weekend. ❤️❤️❤️

Happy Thursday

Have a wonderful week. I hope you enjoy this mini playlist of beautiful encouraging songs. 

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. Courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.

Five months later and I’m still living in my car. The rattle of the road has become my lullaby and I have realized that even with little I still have so much more to give. I have abundant love to bless with. I have smiles to share. Joy to grow and kindness to harvest. It’s a wonderful day. Each sorrow is a lesson reaped and wisdom given. God bless you all on your journeys as we approach this weekend. I count on my hands the beautiful things in life: family, children, music, faith and love. Some things are always good in the midst of pain. I seek to advance the light in myself and my community.

Dear God, please mind the homeless and keep them safe tonight. For there are people who don’t even have a car nor tent to sleep in. Please guide the despondent and the hungry and mind those that I love and have not gotten the chance to love yet.

Thank you 2022 Readers

Happy New Year to all of those lovely people who have the taken the time to be read my blog over these past three years! I started this blog as a space to process a tremendous amount of loss, the deaths of friends and family, moving, transitions, violence. This blog was a space for me to very openly and honestly process significant emotions in an anonymous and expressive setting. But now that my blog is growing, I want to grow with it and with you. Thank you, readers, for being present with me on this journey, mysterious readers and bloggers from other counties, countries and states. It is nice to have someone care about my writing in this digital “otherwise” space, that sometimes feels like an abyss and other times like an extended home. Thank you for your warmth, your commentary, encouragement and kindness. I am so thankful for your all.

Parable of Characters

The sky doesn’t ask the bird, why it has to fly. 

Neither does the wind question why the lion roars. 

The sand does not ask the water not to ebb and flow. 

Nor the grass why the gazelle leaps so gracefully, so feebly. 

The snow does for us to judge the ice for its bitter cold. nor the sun judge the fire for its burn. 

The desert does not ask the sunset why it dies with light

The sky don’t inquire why the stars are content to bask in Lunas shadow. 

The moon does not ask the moth why she seeks out her light. 

Nor the fireflies flickering why the cicadas incessantly chirp. 

The mountains don’t judge the Eagle for his isolation. 

Nor the ducks ask the geese why the their ganders gwak. 

The river does not pry as to why the salmon swims up stream. 

The graves let rest the ghosts in their a haunting. 

The ground doesn’t ask a tree to move 
The rain doesn’t ask a cloud not to weep.

The forest doesn’t seek the reason the conifers don’t lose their leaves. 

The branches of autumn don’t chastise the bleeding of the trees.

This poem uses nature as a metaphor to discuss human behavioral variance. Some of us are stubborn, timid, passive, shy, angry, lovers, loners, stoners, saints. Some of us spend our lives denying our natures. But our virtues and are vices are often synonymous. Don’t deny your nature, embrace yourself with love. The stubborn ones are often the worlds defenders. The passive ones might be the peacemakers. The loners…. Are often are poets. Those angry are our healing warriors. Love each affect and essence of yourself.

The soundscapes of highway 183

Soundscapes of the stars as your sleeping in your car.

There’s this concept in the humanities called reflexivity. It’s essentially the idea that our lived experiences can define our epistemologies and ontologies: So, what does it mean to sleep in a car?

The rushing of the highway, the scratching of Velcro on windows and rustling of reflectix. The 5am street cleaners, the boom box of a beatdown Cadillac and conversations floating by.

The rosary upon the rear view mirror, and sage upon the dash becomes a talisman against the suffering of stars and empty lots

Floating each night. There’s encampments underneath the interstate, and homes in parking lots.

This is just a temporary home, not a permanent election: an affirmation I repeat to console my predilections.

You won’t feel it unless your still, but the vortexes of highway winds rattle the fiberglass frame of this 2000 Honda CR-V. Each pulsation moves your head and each breath collects within the cavity wall, suspended then collapsing.

This is not where I thought I would beat 25 …..

#Carlife

Someone should study the soundscapes of highways, but I doubt any musicologists would forego normative shelters to sleep in their car!

Scholars focus on abstractions and theoretical paradigms.

Bruno Latour claims that all objects are part of networks and have agency independent of their animation. And for this reason I bestowed my vehicle with the title: Xena, after the warrior princess.

My car is a cyborg, an instrument of modernity and symbolic of the excesses of capitalism. Her minimalism has made me meditate in a manner no one who has not been in this situation could explain.

Xena is a a metaphor for my own broken disabled body. It’s a privilege that she is extant. In light of her broken doors and worn belts.

Disabled body, functionality un possessed. movement unordained.

Self-sufficiency silences this solemn and distorted soliloquy

Xena is entangled in a network of webs: metaphorical, physical, and theoretical. She has her own system of sounds: dissonant cacophonous, dysfunctional. She engages with other mediums of sound and simultaneously sings with me.

The reduction of materials and land ownership fundamentally alters one’s ontological positionality and social paradigm.

I still count myself grateful despite my unconventionalities and bitter deficits

John Cage once controversially claimed that noise is music; I’ve decided that I’m in accordance with this perspective:

For I’ve learned to harmonize with the humming of the highway and the rubber on the road. The road offers no judgment, nor praise. On the highway, all voices becomes drowned and unified into an ambient roar.

Stephen Feld discussed acoustemolgies and how nature and waterfalls could be seen as instrumentation:

Well, I know well the sounds of bleeding bass, the static of my broken radio, and the ticking metronome of my turn signal are also texture and instrumentation.

Praxis and application will always supersede theory and methods. For all this talk of lived experiences, they know only what they read …..

Academics are etic. They are outsiders to the world because they don’t live enough in it.

Allan Merriam wasn’t a great musician, why did he get to guide the field of Musicology? He never sang enough in, it strummed it or wept with in it. Did he?

The acquisition of the appropriate disciplinary jargon is an arduous process. A constant act of tensión and translation

We are sold a belief that enslaves us to a form of capital religiosity. Thoreau would agree that although my space has become arguably more confined physically, I have become spiritually more liberated. Today, I saw cranes, and ducklings. I felt the wind in my hair and the water trickling between my toes. The fabrics placed on this corporeal frame are no longer a primary concern.

Though at night this body may be found resting under the blaring lights of a department store, by morning, these feet are found strolling and roaming with god’s other creatures.

It’s a cosmological shift.

What makes a beautiful poem?

Is a beautiful poem evocative ethnography? Impregnated with descriptions and aesthetics- but at its core a representation of culture? Does it it stir the affectations- Stilvan Tomkins?

Is a beautiful poem, beautiful due to its politically? It’s ontologies and epistemologies made digestible for public consumption? Is it accessible? Does it speak with for and by the marginalized and oppressed? Post colonial, anti racist, theological….

Does it present a new paradigm, methodology, theory or theology? Is a beautiful poem a map of actors and networks like Bruno Latour might say? Or is the poem an agent in itself?

Alan Merriam, Bruno Latour, Silvan Tomkins, Mary Oliver….. remain companions in my head.

I’ve spent almost four years studying the humanities and culture. Yet, my poems are still not beautiful enough. Is it because they lack agency, aesthetics, politically? Is it because they are too close to my own personality, ideology, and representative of excess reflexivity? Have I not managed the jargon, the frameworks, or the craft appropriately? I still manage to write poems that are heard by so very few. Do my poems lack power because of my unimpressive positionality?

Entombed String Instrument

The grand ash tree on almond road was cut to mold my girth on October 24th. And the plucked metal became my voice. So it was in the death of my ancestors, I first sounded. The luthier created me with love, but with jaded fret hands. Hands that could not strum, nor hold a chord. Fine hands to carve and bend and envision me. But to weak to hold a fiddle. Too dull to hold the joint just right to vibrate perfectly my enlivened strings. Elliot Bates was the first to speak of us. The social life of instruments. He said we possessed sociality, relationality. That we were empowered agents of culture and context.

My strings are silent for my owner possesses not the skill nor the patience to wait with me. To hear me. And so sometimes I hum in resonance with an accidental vibration of the room. But mostly I sit in silence. I am entombed. Would someone tell the humans? It’s a crime to leave us unaccompanied in this dark and dusty room. To bang us around as they move about, but failing to sit with us? She only interacts me so that I may cry with her. She only sits with me to feel my breath so I may absorb her tears. How will they ever learn music when they don’t take the time to listen? And I fear that my wood will crack under the movement and the dryness of this lonesome room. But there is no sunlight to console me as there was for the ash trees. Rather, I live quietly violently in my red velvet case. Smeared with finger prints and never bathed. She never spent the time with me to hear my cacophony, my rhythm nor my rhymes. Bates will you not free us with your theories? With the significance we possess? Or do you doubt our ability to affect divine affections? Perhaps you fear this instrument is possessed? Silent singer won’t you free us from our tombs? Or do you plan to leave all your instruments alone as if we were not agents of music? As if we had no voice? Do you plan to never play me? Never touch these strings again? Or will you for a moment, just lend a broken hand. Your pen is always with you. How I wish I were your hands! But rather I your instrument am entombed but not yet dead.

Premonitions

Premonitions begin behind the eyes. 
A melody that sneaks onto your doorstep, that slipped in with the wind. 

Behind your eyes, it’s a feeling like you are about to cry. You eyes feel like wells, but you just don’t know why. This feeling that you know some misfortune is waiting to be foretold. 

It’s an unexplained aching of your heart. It’s distant from you, yet you can’t set it apart. It’s like a music box that refuses to turn off. 

Your heart it creeps like spiders in your thoughts. It’s just a feeling but it doesn’t seem to stop. You feel like weeping but instead you count the seconds on the clock. Until you’re sleeping. It refuses to depart. 
A need to cry, but you can’t shake the feeling. That something soon will start

Falling up

For Years I Had This Image In My Head
Falling Losing Crawling Falling
But Where I Fell The Ground Was Sweet
There Was Honey And Grass So Green
Where I Fell Was Safe And Warm

Like falling into loving Arms
I Thought That I Was Falling Down
I Grasped For Something All Around
I Looked Up And I Looked Down
My Face Planted Into The Muddy Mounds
I Thought I Was Falling Down
But Now I See, Alice, Is Me,
I Was Falling Up Towards You
Into Your Kind Arms
I Was Letting Go Of Pain
Slowly, Slowly Healing
You Had Me In Your Arms
I Was Floating Up Towards You
Falling up from Earth

Pink Pens

In the margins of my notebook are peonies and poodles: I write with a pink or a purple pen. I think better in poems and songs than paragraphs. I write faster with voice recordings. I understand more through action than I do through words.

I understand more the language of greased hands than I do your words and jargon. And beautiful actions prove more precious than lovely words. Positions and titles do not impress me. The grandeur of modernity fails to grasp my attention.

If we should amass wealth should it not be counting in love? Let us not hold our head so highly that we forget our original positions.

Why do our words lack color? Black mirrors and white paper? I want to be immersed within the color—— sonically and physically. Hand me a pink or purple pen!

Some of us think better though song. We think better at twilight or dawn

Perhaps our global presentation of self is obscured. Assumptions are made our aptitudes and trajectories. Resilient, we refuse to concede.

Uncertain of our direction, genealogies, and histories. Pages and pages and pages of words that we have written, questions we pose …. But what have we learned?

How do we love and live authentically? Such a loaded term is authenticity.

My mouth outruns my hands.

Accelerating words and spaces. Selling words and stumbling through spaces. Jumbled vagrant words systems and signs. What valence are these theories?

We have the power of election. Moral, ethical choice and selection.

I’ll keep writing with my pink and purple pen

Perhaps, the ghost in my head is freed through the numerous recasts of my mind. Clarity is gained through the rummage of my mouth. These doodles help me to find healing within myself.

When I have no one to speak to I speak with myself. I move my feet and find the skies and the trees and the nature and the bees and I have nothing but songs to give to no one.

Then let this be my curse and my blessing—— that my mouth is free to roam but my hands are bound to give. This is the only way that I have ever found peace to live.

Wandering Alone

People are afraid of adventure. And thus in my exploring….. I tend to wander, solitary. I’ve seen oceans, streams and forests. Held the water in my hands. And I no longer miss the moments passed, nor dream to hold another’s hands. In this silence, I’ve found purpose. I no longer yearn nor need. My troubles fade like dew drops when I roam and the sun greet.

Colorado Bend State Park
Llamo State Park
Colorado Bend
Blue Dragon Fly on the River

If you’ve been following my blog for a while…. You may have noticed my writing got a little too blue and I don’t aim to depress my readers. Yet, recent life events (aka processing sexual assault and losing friends) started to darken my normal creative hue. Well, I’m trying to take a new approach. Because I don’t really trust too many people and probably need to go to therapy to heal from these traumatic events. I’ve taken a break from hyper focusing on my feelings and tried to focus more on spending time with nature, distancing, detaching, finding peace. I’ve spent a lot of time camping and state parks recently and finding my spirituality again in these small beautiful things. I aim to write beautifully but my writing starting to become soured by my focus. The time I’ve spent camping has allowed me to shift my gaze. Unsettle and resettle my soul and to share with you the ways that I am begging to find love, light and god again.

Morning Melancholy

Friends are fickle and Families start feuds. Crushes will crush you and men will harm you.

Consoling words I told myself to soothe the tears and intrusive thoughts away. 

I’ve stood by people who watched me drown. 
And drowned before those people who now standby 

I’m more cautious now of my heart…. With all its open wounds and scars 

Writing you’re a true false friend. You relieve me through reliving in these words. But you can not qwell my thirst. 

I’ve stopped trusting people. Not stopped loving people. I’ve stopped hugging people, because they stopped holding me.

October First

It’s Saturday and I’m asleep in my car at a Texas state park underneath the stars. This isn’t where I thought I would be as I’m approaching 25. It’s beautiful and chaotic. The Gemini twins must be guiding me. I always thought I would be a singer. Since I was two years old, this is what I thought I most become. Instead, I write about music. I write poems that only fifty people read, perhaps less. I’m gracious for these moments. Bittersweet as they may be. In my lonesomeness, I’ve found the moon to be a kind companion. I stopped trusted people. I walk so many roads alone. But I’ve seen so much beauty too. Maybe some day someone will hear my songs and find them lovely. Or perhaps one day when I’ve passed on, my swan song may be known. I hear the crickets song along the hum of the highway hideaway. I don’t know if I’m on the right road. All I know of God is the blessings of the vagrants that I feed. Other travelers like me. If I eat, then so do ye.

I find god here among the trees. Here in me. The forest outside the city streets. I’m getting a PhD in a degree that I’m afraid (sometimes) won’t help anyone but maybe me. But then again. Medicine heals people who go on to kill the earth. Humanities hurts people because they can’t heal dirt with theories. They think man is above the rest. I wonder who reads these poems. So silent is my existence. And so loud are my poems in their yearning. So loud is the earth and its violence. I think I want nothing but silence. But sound.

My body is breaking. But we’re all degrading. Our earth, be she so lovely, is falling apart. I’m lonely in her loveliness. Pictures of trees and never of me on this social medium. Unnamed I share all my thoughts with strangers. Who’ve become friends through their words. They know more of me than most know of me. The sides I’m scared to show. I’m shouting into the distance. Trying to proclaim my existence. Because if tomorrow I may go. At least somewhere, someone has my poems.

– All I know of heaven and all I know of God. Yet no one knows me. I’ve left not a single finished song.

Reflection

Anyone who has not seen the ending of Reign. I’m enclosing it here with my favorite poem. All of Reign is painful to watch, it’s a reminder of how much suffering there is in this world whatever your social class. The following poem is my favorite poem of all time by Edgar Allen Guest.

“I might have been rich if I’d wanted the gold instead of the friendships
I’ve made.
I might have had fame if I’d sought for renown in the hours when I
purposely played.
Now I’m standing to-day on the far edge of life, and I’m just looking
backward to see
What I’ve done with the years and the days that were mine, and all that
has happened to me.

I haven’t built much of a fortune to leave to those who shall carry my 
name, 
And nothing I’ve done shall entitle me now to a place on the tablets of 
fame. 
But I’ve loved the great sky and its spaces of blue; I’ve lived with the 
birds and the trees; 
I’ve turned from the splendor of silver and gold to share in such pleasures 
as these. 

I’ve given my time to the children who came; together we’ve romped and 
we’ve played, 
And I wouldn’t exchange the glad hours spent with them for the money that 
I might have made. 
I chose to be known and be loved by the few, and was deaf to the plaudits 
of men; 
And I’d make the same choice should the chance come to me to live my life 
over again. 

I’ve lived with my friends and I’ve shared in their joys, known sorrow with
all of its tears;
I have harvested much from my acres of life, though some say I’ve
squandered my years.
For much that is fine has been mine to enjoy, and I think I have lived to
my best,
And I have no regret, as I’m nearing the end, for the gold that I might
have possessed.”

—- Edgar Allen Guest

Today a pastor stopped me as I was going to my class. He asked me what I knew of God. I said that God is love. He asked me what I knew of hell. I said what do you know of liberation? He said that its an imposition and asked me to join his next event. I said thank you for your perspective but I’m rather quite content. He said I don’t think you’re saved. I said my hands will show the difference. I’ve fed more today the homeless while you leave your people fired and unquenched. He said do you know oh hell? I said I know God and am content. 

Saved thirty three times

Call me a heretic, but I don’t believe in hell. God’s love was not a transaction. And I don’t need hell to complete the concept of heaven. Capitalism in our texts: the wages of sin is death and Jesus paid it all. I don’t expect this life to ease its suffering…. only to walk beside those who suffer….. I’m content in my broken theologies. At the intersection of heresy and Christianity. I am always on my knees.

The damned promise land

We are taught that heaven can not exist without hell. That pleasure is paid trough pain

Wealth is reaped from the famished. And our promised land was built on the genocide of the damned. Our forgiveness came through another’s false condemnation. Our mercy, we drink with blood. God’s power comes through his rejection of the devil. Why the dichotomy? Why the wrath with the love? You can not speak of jealousy in the same breath as love. You love like a hurricane. So I desired silence and violence rather than love. You do not teach your children love. You curse those you love most. Those whom you bestow the greatest gifts you balance those with the greatest plagues. I can never find peace in the story of Job. I can not worship the same hands that rains fire and drowns water. If you have power to erase evil then why you would you burn us ? God of Abraham why do you lie to us. Why did you lie with us? Blood flows the promised land….you bring you beloved terror and bleed us out with tears. Eating from an apple—- you gave us choice only to destroy us— for such a stupid reason. I believe you take pleasure in destroying us.

A poem discussing conflict in the Bible. And just to be clear— I am religious and I am Christian. But I do believe there are errors in the Bible (genocide, slavery, wrath, jealousy) I do not believe these stories consistently reflect accurately the true nature of our loving god.

On Theology and Talismans 🧿

1. Idolatry is caused by positing unloving behaviors, actions, and thoughts above god and people. Idolatry is false love—— charms symbolism and myth are culture. They are distinct and inter complicated.

2. Culture in and of itself is not oppositional to religion. Though some may view be confused by this conflation.

3. The lack of divinely accredited ownership accorded to the the objects invention does not negate or profane its existence or essence. Symbols and myths may be present outside of a biblical context.

4, The cross is a symbol and not an idol, yet it is still a spiritual object. A charm or talisman can also exist with inherent symbolism without evoking idolatry. The presence of cultural symbolism may or may not invoke religious and or spiritual connotations.

5. Charms and talismans are often empowered through folklore and myth that are cross culturally extant. The power of these associations does not automatically ascribe idolatry when three occur outside of a biblical context or paradigm.

6. absence of a biblical context does not necessarily defile the ontological position of the cultural object. Charms can thus exist in a space or continuum of secular and spiritual significance without being oppositional entities.

7. The empowerment of a cultural object does not necessarily pose a threat to god or religion. When god is assumed to have constructed both culture and religion. An entity that contracted the constructs of cultural objects and permits cultural production can not be threatened by the objects contrived.

8. Objects of cultural production need not be categorized by archaic binary constructs of profanity and sacredness. A third conception is possible.