Category: Uncategorized

Blue Flower

Hello blue flower. Or should I write Blue Flower? You are so unique. Many of your family are not blue; they are red and yellow, orange and purple. Your family can be large and aromatic. They can be flashy & the center of attention. Among those siblings you would be a mere peripheral compliment.

But dear Blue Flower, your beauty is significant because you need no help or complimenting from others. Alone you are small but magnificent in your independence and radical in the color of blue. You stand out in your five or so petals, your bright white stamen. Your beauty fills a photograph regardless of the placement. You don’t need others.

Because you are not flashy & attention seeking, you can be overlooked. You are bright against the backdrop of simple leaves but unlike others, when you are found you are an even greater treasure.

Thank you little blue flower for being so big when I found you, for being defiant in your blossom that is elegant in perfection and the first bloom in a nest of leaves.

Thank you for helping me to see my little bloom, also independent, simple yet bold, defiant in timing and magnificent without needing to be placed in a vase. You are splendid right where you are regardless of whether you are noticed or appreciated, your aroma is so slight, your design as if drawn by a child with a blue crayon. 

Thank you Blue Flower for being who you are, all alone. Your short life was a successful one. 

Thank You,
Lisa

I saw Delight Today

I saw Delight today

And joy.

They were in a diner with a couple of kids.

The kids were arguing over who got to hold the menu

And delight reached her arms around one child

And kissed him on the top of his head.

Joy got the attention of the other

And helped her look at the pictures of the ice cream sundaes

And discussed quite seriously, the difference

Between caramel and butterscotch.

The two had Peace among them

Congregational care in the little booth

And a moment of the fleeting holiness

Where sanctity is ice cream

And beauty is sipped

Through a plastic straw.

#poetry

Here We Are Again, Lord


Here I am again Lord
Lonely and afraid
Although I know you are with me.
We sit together in this quiet time
Like an old married couple.
Its not necessary to talk
We’re both too tired
And you know what’s on my mind
without me saying a word.

Yet I feel compelled
to remind you
that I’m afraid.
I’m taking a chance.
I’m crossing the lane
Crossing that line
Jumping without a parachute
Flying without being tethered
to anything
but you.

Yeah, yeah you’re here.
Do my speaking
Do my flying
Make my pitch
and come back home
and tell me how it went.

Because I’m tired.
Its been a long life
No one knows
we live like this
in this sort of
relationship.

They wouldn’t believe me
if I told them.

Prayer of Confession 1

Oh my Lord,
My sweet, sweet Lord.
I imagine the disengaged expression on your face
Used to represent an antiquated Jewish carpenter
From the “middle” East,
Yes you, that Jesus;
Please help us.

You see Lord,
We the People,
In order to form a more “perfect union”,
A union of all American men
who are white and strong and good and straight
And ride the white horses
In chasing away those
Evil injuns
And saving the helpless women
In the petticoats and calico dresses,
The “make American great Again” men
Please Jesus,
Please forgive “us”,
The white men that created you.

Deliver us from the
Hate swarm
Group-think
Power hungry
Egomaniacal
Fear filled
Gun toters
Who profess
to believe in a
Guns-and-Roses Moses
And not a brown and homeless
immigrant.

Let me kneel and wash your tired feet
As you wipe the sweat from my
Upturned brow before you
And receive your grace in place of those
Who feel no need, nor understand
Arrogance, bigotry, sexism, xenophobia.
Please forgive us as
Mr. Cleaver forgave the Beave
For doing something so stupid
That we make even those who
Desire to live stupidly
Feel offended.

And dear Lord? My golden calf Lord?
Teach us again how you
Washed the feet of the 12
And probably even more than 12,
If you actually count the women,
And the children
And the stranger
And Elijah;
Elijah who awaits an invitation to
Come to our “open” table
And celebrate with all of us.

Finally.

Amen.

Bedlam

“…God has disposed us with a mushroom shaped cloud …. someone will set the bomb off, and we will all be blown away…”

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Our family sang songs in the car on trips, especially vacations, but I believe we were a little unusual in that we sang a few that were not the usual …

Sweet Rosie O’Grady, she was a blacksmith by birth …
Just a Bowl of Butterbeans…
Three itty fishes and a momma fishy too…
In the Boarding House Where I Lived….
We Live for You, We Die for You, National Embalming School…

There was another song, that is vaguely remembered from a cassette tape recorded by my dad, a couple of his sisters and their husbands, on a trip he took back home a few months before his sudden death, 34 years ago this month. If I could remember it now, it would be a great history lesson, almost as good as Billy Joel’s We Didn’t Start the Fire.

It talked about how the French hate the Germans, the Irish hate the Scots, etc and ended with a line similar to the one I began with “…and we will all be blown away”, followed by a whistle of the sound of a bomb dropping from the skies. It was written post WWII, obviously, and wasn’t one of the more popular Baumgartner tunes, but I listened to the tape, and in the decade following my dad’s death, spent a good deal of time with his little sister (almost a carbon copy – they looked like twins). We sat around playing canasta, with bourbon and coke flowing freely, & sang & drank & smoked & played all night. It was the ‘80s. We were in the middle of the Cold War, and discussions of nuclear weapons were popping up like dandelions around families and churches and social clubs. The US spent (at least) billions of dollars on a bomb that would stop their bomb before it could reach us, and although it failed in every test back then, we poured billions and billions more into it, seemingly with endless funds and voter support.

All along though, the US had enough nuclear war heads to blow up the entire planet several times over. “My stockpile is bigger than your stockpile…” was the US/Soviet dialogue.

How things have changed.

Looking back to those days, no one and no-thing could stop the power of the US with the backing of Ronald Reagan. We were the shining city on the hill, where the poor dreamed of a better life and sought to make their way here. We didn’t fear them. Unless they were Communists, of course. Even then we opened our arms to those who sought political asylum from the Soviet Union in the US, many talented and brilliant people who sought freedom and teetered over the tight wire of Communism, oppression, and poverty to beg for our protection.  We granted them the sanctuary to house them and keep them safe from their enemy states.  (Hmmm, whatever happened to doing that, say, for Syrians?)

Even though I’m a Democrat, I respected all the Presidents, regardless of political party, because they were OUR Presidents. While I became President-elect of the College Democrats following the Mondale/Ferraro attempt to win the White House in 1984 and got to attend wine and cheese parties at Speaker Jim Wright’s home in Fort Worth, I have to grant respect to Reagan (aka the Great Communicator) for coming to a nuclear agreement with the Soviet Union. My side was wanting an elimination of nuclear warheads and even nuclear power plants but that was not to be. But it seemed that by the end of the Cold War, the US/Soviet relations had agreed to disagree. It would have been incomprehensible for Reagan to have had the covert spies or friends of Gorbachev have photo ops in the Oval Office, or would Reagan or Bush or Nixon, for that matter, ever considered the Soviet leaders as people to be admired.

Had there been a question of Russian involvement even giving Mondale a couple of electoral votes in that pitiful Presidential election of 1984, I would bank on Ronald Reagan making a speech and endorsing a full fledged investigation into any interference in our American democratic process. Any American President would, until now.

Half of the Democratic Presidents of my lifetime had mistresses who were either accepted or hated by the media, except Barack Obama and Jimmy Carter; and Jimmy Carter actually acknowledged his sin of “lust in his heart” to Playboy magazine and everyone was aghast that such a thing could be said. JFK had numerous women at his disposal, Bill Clinton did, too. We thought THOSE issues were scandalous?

What has happened? Where did our education of civics, our understanding of American history and our diplomacy go?

Try as I might, I can’t understand this phenomenon of Trump believers. I think it is because they do believe in something of Trump that does not equate with patriotism. Trump himself seems clueless as to how the three branches of government work. I have friends who think that presidents are elected for 8 year terms. Many believe that individual states already have power that outweighs Supreme Court decisions or can manipulate the Court’s decisions to fit their culture. (Look at what’s happened to sanctuary cities, abortion rights, and gay marriage).

Now we have the “good old boys” who have been the backbone of the American south (in my exposure anyway) with whom I shared classes with in all of the schools I attended, who have begun this vitriol over Blue Lives Matter and the Confederate Flag being a symbol of southern history (it was an uprising and we lost …hello????). The NRA has become the 4th Reich; “buy a gun, get one free for the sociopath of your choice”. And coworkers who supported Trump have said to me it was “that transgender thing … the queers … that’s just not Christian” or, more popular still was “I just can’t vote for Hillary Clinton.”

What has happened, America? That sick feeling I had the night of the Presidential election and the days following did not go away; they have been stretched out from having a political flu, to a short remission with the Women’s March, back down to a relapse in the face of White Nationalists organizing in Charlottesville …. which wouldn’t trouble me as much but the swastikas, the white robes and the TORCHES? Seriously, TORCHES?? What the hell? Are these born again cavemen or Klansmen? It’s hard to differentiate.

Here I Stand.

But I cannot finish with the words of John Wesley, “So be it”.

Hey God: What? How? When? Why?

Siri defines “bedlam” as “a scene of uproar and confusion”.

I define God as the great “I AM” and the Creator.

Please, God, re-create us in your image and grant us wisdom to relieve our confusion.

AMEN+

My Mother the Whale

My re-creation of meditation

My Mother the Whale

At some desperate time in my life, another one when I felt alone and needing something  to fill the void; I was befriended or I’d guess, absorbed by another similar blob & I learned from it. It took decades but I learned this very important lesson; how to commune with one of the most giant mothers of our world. It has grown and changed and transformed over the years But it begins like this:

I am alone on a beach on a gray fall day

I lie back on the sand; it’s noIMG_0498t hot; it’s a little cool. I am alone. The tide is rolling in and as I hear this sound come and go, I also let it fill and empty my lungs. Sometimes there are are images I allow to flee from me but usually I focus on my breath. Tide in, breath in. Tide out, breath out. It takes some time to slow it down that much lest I hyperventilate or imagine a tsunami.

When my breathing and the sounds of the tide are in sync, I let the tide roll further and further in, so that it is first at my feet, but getting closer and closer to my head at a steady pace. By the time I fear the salt water in my face, I am relaxed enough to sink further into the sand, and also into the sea just beneath the surface of the sand.

It is there, deep down in the bottom of the ocean that I am initially blinded by the brightness of the white sand on the bottom. As I move around, I see the sand moves too and this feels relaxing and playful. It’s around this time that I remember I’m under water.

It is in just that moment, my mother, the humpback whale, lifts me up to the surface to take a breath of air; which will last me another 15 minutes of total self absorption and play.

I relax deeper and my trust increases. I realize that this magnificent aircraft carrier protecting me overhead from exposure – and danger – is my mother, the humpback. She refers to me only as her “dear one” and we play, she lifts me up for a breath and when I come to rely to on her to do so, she sees that I find my own way.

We have time together, this enormous creature, just the two of us, before we have to journey back north because her life’s purpose has basically been fulfilled.

It’s not an atonement, it’s not a ritual in any of those ways, but she has been genetically programmed to stay behind the herd, eat more, birth me and then escort me back to the northern pacific.

The “cute” orca out there? the killer whales? Kill. They try to get between my mother and me so they can hold me down long enough to suffocate me. The outloud cries and torment of her wanting to stop and “give up” struggle deeply with her recognition that she has to move on or risk dying herself; her life’s purpose stolen in a flash. I can see similar expressions with humans when a loved one dies.

But those thoughts usually flow right on through the water of which I am made; the water of which most of us are created from and filled with; ashes and ashes and dust to dust; why not sand to sand?

Faith has been compared to floating. If you fight, you’ll drown. If you relax, your journey can be magnificent.

My mother the humpback pushes her giant nose under me to lift me to breathe, she journeys right beside me, always watchful for those “cute” orcas who only want my eyes. She protects me. She leads me down an instinctual path that she knows but cannot map out. I know to trust her, without having had therapy with her. She births me. And each day of our journey, she saves me by forcing me to breathe (especially when I am busy at play and want to whine, ”but mom“) and she remains watchful for the enemy.

The ancient Hebrews, they say, were slow in asking directions and thus wandered the desert 40 years. The didn’t wander into the wrong place. They just took a long time getting there because it took THEM a long time to be prepared for where they were going.

My mother the humpback is like that, too. I have no idea if she’s leading me to slaughter, day care or eternal freedom. I only know that she will not leave me except in the case of her death and that if she dies before our journey is complete, most likely, I also will die.

My mother is a humpback whale. I don’t know her name or the name she has given me.  But I would recognize her singing anywhere.whale 2