may I introduce

some of the most amazing people I know? A year ago, this is what I was doing. Wow, I am privileged to have been part of their lives for a year! It's weird how you get to know a class so well, then they move on to the next grade... and a part of your heart follows each of them...

Broken

Glass
Shattered in the street
Once
A protective windshield
Splintered
To a snow of glittering razors
Pedestrians
Sidestep the beautiful mess
Cars
Swerve to the other lane

YAAAAYY!!!!

The intention of this post is to make insanely jealous those of my friends who live in areas deprived of magic.

WE HAVE SNOW!!! *

I walked, rather than drove, to the Post Office for the sheer joy of being alone in a falling white world. Snow clung to my hair and eyelashes like diamonds, including me in the transformation of everything in sight.

*more snow than Lancaster County had the whole of last winter :D

Geronimo

Geronimo is one of my heroes. Yes, you read right. Even though I deeply believe that violence in retribution for inflicted violence achieves nothing but more carnage, even though I am convinced that the blood of an assailant is more precious than my own comfort and freedom, I have felt a certain kinship to Geronimo since I was knee-high to the proverbial grasshopper.

"I was born on the prairies where the wind blew free and there was nothing to break the light of the sun. I was born where there were no enclosures." I have never been able to articulate why, but I've always understood why something in Geronimo died when he was forced to adhere to the white man's iron mold of "civilization", with all its walls. A tamed horse might perform well until its master thinks its will conquered, but there always remains a fiery wild streak that, without warning, necessitates breaking the confining harness and bolting to run uninhibited. Why is wildness seen as something to be squashed? Why are so many threatened by the unconquered?

"The soldiers never explained to the government when an Indian was wronged, but reported the misdeeds of the Indians. We took an oath not to do any wrong to each other or to scheme against each other." Geronimo's courage in his desperate fight against the atrocious injustices committed against his people inspirits my personal battles against the injustices I see in my world. Geronimo knew and admitted his battle was ill-fated. He was a brilliant man who, though he eluded and held at bay the entire U.S. army with his small band of poorly-armed warriors (and the women and children under his protection), could see his inevitable defeat. And yet, he remained tenacious. He knew that success is not dependent on a peachy conclusion to the story; failure is only pronounced upon those who close their eyes and stop their ears to the cries of the oppressed and cease to fight for them.

"I cannot think that we are useless or God would not have created us. There is one God looking down on us all. We are all the children of one God. The sun, the darkness, the winds are all listening to what we have to say." ~Geronimo

With Lifted Hands

Lord,

With lifted hands I bow
As my spirit nears Your Holy Throne
Holy

Purify my heart
Cleanse my hands
They're stained again
Stained

Cleanse me, Oh God!
This earth leaves stains on my soul

It's easier
To embrace despair
Than to keep fighting for hope

But Hope, irrepressible
Rises up

Your bloody hand
Touches mine
May I cover it with tears?

thanksgiving for bliss

Abba Father,

You have seen my upstretched arms
Hands yearning toward impenetrable sky

Your rain pours down
Cleansing face and drowning tears
Holy liquid fills my hands
Flows down my arms
Quenches my being

Open my fingers, Father
They want to possess this flood
Open my fingers
Let the water flow through
I will feel every drop
But let it fall

i wish...

... that we could meet at a little coffee shop somewhere in the city this evening. A coffee shop with cool art on the walls and playing blues or jazz. I would buy YOUR latte this time. ;) And we could talk to our hearts' content.

I miss you, girl!

au revoir ordinaire!

come with me
i'm flying away
away, away!
to Never, Neverland

little flowers lift their heads
unpetal wide-eyed faces
we're flying away
away, away!
to Never, Neverland

gauzy fairies on the clouds
knew we would but wonder we are
flying away
away, away!
to Never, Neverland

Ms. Moon radiates pride
she knew we'd denounce
and fly away
away, away!
to Never, Neverland


i think that star just winked at me.

Isaiah 58:9-10

If you do away with the yoke

of oppression,

with the pointing finger and

malicious talk,

and if you spend yourselves in behalf

of the hungry

and satisfy the needs of the oppressed,

then your light will rise in the darkness,

and your night will become like the noonday.

reconciliation

"No man can look with undivided vision at God and at the world of reality so long as God and the world are torn asunder... But there is a place...at which God and man have become one... It lies in the midst of history as a divine miracle. It lies in Jesus Christ, the reconciler of the world." -Dietrich Bonhoeffer

can't go on

I don't have words to paint pictures of the scenes that tear my heart out and leave it writhing. What kind of love is one that allows me to spend an afternoon soaking up the peace and beauty of the mystical woods in solitude while they run screaming from exploding homes with no where to go that offers them a beautiful place to rest in safety while they sob their grief for their parents... for their children? I can't stop crying for the people I never met yet love with all my heart. How can I feel peace until they can do the same?

My God! We can't go on like this!