MLK: Ebenezer Baptist Church, 5 months before his assassination

"I say to you this morning, that if you have never found something so dear and precious to you that you will die for it, then you aren't fit to live.

You may be 38 years old, as I happen to be, and one day, some great opportunity stands before you and calls upon you to stand for some great principle, some great issue, some great cause. And you refuse to do it because you are afraid.

You refuse to do it because you want to live longer. You're afraid that you will lose your job, or you are afraid that you will be criticized or that you will lose your popularity, or you're afraid that somebody will stab or shoot or bomb your house. So you refuse to take a stand.

Well, you may go on and live until you are ninety, but you are just as dead at 38 as you would be at ninety.

And the cessation of breathing in your life is but the belated announcement of an earlier death of the spirit.

You died when you refused to stand up for right.

You died when you refused to stand up for truth.

You died when you refused to stand up for justice."

the bittersweet between my teeth

In Hinduism, he told me, there are two paths to G-d: Love and Knowledge. In high school, I think I followed that Love path--loving my youth group, loving my leaders and friends. Then college came, and with it the path of Knowledge.

I can see how some would think of it this way, the quest for Knowledge itself as a way of being hungry. And I don't want to discount that.

But I don't know if Knowledge is a path to G-d.

Because how does thirst really ever come except by knowing you are utterly dry, and without? Is this why is says do not be wise in your own eyes? Love and Knowledge are compatible, but they are also not equal.

But thirst, to thirst in your blood and in your bones and in your eye sockets and nerve endings, to want, desire, crave, ache for, need something more--this must be a path to G-d. How could someone live thirsty and not in the end meet G-d?

Like the Spanish boy in The Alchemist, who sells his entire flock of sheep and leaves everything he knows to get to Egypt. Even if he doesn't make it, he will die trying to find and fulfill his legend.

And lately that question that gnaws at me--can people change?--has taken a new dimension, Can a person become hungry? Are we either born or not born with this hunger? Can it be grown in us? I know it is not hereditary.

I want to be able to believe that overarching statement that we are all longing for the same world, whether we know it or not, we are all longing for connection and for freedom and for the Prince of Peace to reign on earth. But sometimes I'm not so sure...

But as for me, I have to get to Egypt. If it means selling everything I have, I will buy no other way. Even if I never see the pyramids, I will not rest from this desert crossing. I will walk mi camino propio, and I will not wish for another.

Trust: the antithesis of stress / belief as everyday work; to gut-believe in the good touch of G-d towards me
*a discipline, a practice, a vocation: the work of trusting Love. Intentionally.

''The full life, the one spilling joy and peace, happens only as I come to trust the career of the Lover, Lover who enver burdens his children with shame or self-condemnation but keeps stroking the fears with gentle grace.

Trust in the wholeness of the gospel--including this moment, good news too--and be saved. Choose stress, worry, anxiety, reject what God has given now, which is good news too--refuse to trust--and be condemned.

Without trust in the good news of Jesus, with out trust in the good news of God's saving work even in this moment, without an active, moment-by-moment trust in the good news of an all-sovereign, all-good God, how can we claim to fully believe? This is the trust I lack, to know that if disaster strikes; he carries me even there.''

-A. Voskamp, A Thousand Gifts

´´We are the trees whom shaking fastens more.´´
-George Herbert

"I want to say to you as I move to my conclusion, as we talk about 'Where do we go from here,' that we honestly face the fact that the movement must address itself to the question of restructuring the whole of American society. There are forty million poor people here. And one day we must ask the question, 'Why are there forty million poor people in America?' And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising questions about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth. When you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy. And I'm simply saying that more and more, we've got to begin to ask questions about the whole society. We are called upon to help the discouraged beggars in life's marketplace. But one day we must come to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. It means that questions must be raised. You see, my friends, when you deal with this, you begin to ask the question, 'Who owns the oil?' You begin to ask the question, 'Who owns the iron ore?' You begin to ask the question, 'Why is it that people have to pay water bills in a world that is two-thirds water?' These are questions that must be asked."

-Martin Luther King, Jr, in his speech Where Do We Go From Here?

nobody's advocate

to be identified with those with whom you identify
to remain in a commitment that's not flashy
because, like arianna has said, faithfulness isn't really the sexy choice

but, oh, how i long for a heart unerring
to help sing all your daughters and sons
into the simple & difficult way

you spin in circles, through the rhythms & grooves of my mind
and maybe there is a little less anxiety now
because, just like her and him, i'm just trying to figure it out
& we could call that pretty normal, right?

two steps toward and one step back from you
but failure isn't failure until we stop trying, i've been told
so please be patient
with my mostly wayward and deceit-full heart.

"The written word is weak. Many people prefer life to it."
Annie Dillard

It is not that the summer is so uninteresting that I have nothing to write; it is only that I am living, that I am breathing, that I am recording with my eyes and ears and nose and not with my pen and scrolls.

Cherries ended, I thinned the apples, and peaches start tomorrow. I live my life in seasons, in waiting and biding and breathing and releasing. So here I am, 5 weeks in and 5 weeks out. I've been working lot, to be honest. Cutting weeds and pruning and picking fruit and rooting out flower beds, moving the winter's firewood and cleaning windows and walls. My back aches and my body is tired, my arms are tanned and strong. I fall asleep easily at night, going to bed late and rising early because this is summer, and this is the north, and you can't miss all this daylight and sunshine.

We take moonlit walks and we share fresh fruit and longboard in the late nights. I read a lot.

A little girl drowned Friday night. A best friend's niece. So death touches the circle, always and ever at the lapping fringes. And it's true, we don't know what to say. I don't know what to write in summers like this, in beauty and pain and freshness like this. Life is too real for my silly poems. I used to eat storebought fruit and think it was good, but since trying the local and picking it myself, I can never go back (and is this like life?).

And I don't know when I ever chose to give away my heart, but somehow the North, the earth itself, holds my heart, holds all of me in its beauty and its unpredictability. And I tremble.

p.d.

From our first class together, and all those Los Angeles plays attended in your beautiful navy Volvo,
from our dinners with dreadlocked Jesse and Shannon, laughing and joking,
High-fiving that the Democrats won the Senate and the House in one go.
You must know how dear you have become, you are becoming.

Tonight, I saw you for the first time in many months (having been in San Francisco)
We hugged, greeting, enjoying the poetry event side by side
After, you pulled out your tiny planner--not more than 3 inches long,
wanting to share more of your time with me.
Parting, we shook hands.

You, who hesitate with your sentences, teaching me patience and thoughtfulness
and I am learning pensive speech doesn't have to be awkward
I am seeing just how wide and deep the ribbons of your brain are
You, gentle man in beret
you, upcoming 40th anniversary celebrated with a hiking trip to Sequoia & Yosemite.

You, a boy from Kentucky
a 16 year-old with a high school diploma,
a 22 year-old with a doctorate
an 18 year-old with a wife.

You, a 7 week daughter in tow as you embarked on your first British semester
you, a taste for humor, for irony, for good literature (obviously), for politics
you, an ear for listening

& with all this talk of writing, of following our hearts, of family--
I must confess I sometimes want to cry around you
and I understand you as a professor, an advisor--
but as a father?

SF General Hospital

It's just another Monday, just another day of my internship. Until I talk with a man named Ernest, a Black man of about 35, who matter-of-factly tells me of terrible things, who just needs an ear for a few minutes, who just needs a prayer.

And this room is intense, too much--all the anger boiling over from the drama at the next bed, and Ernest, tender & gentle Ernest, praying for strength and for his family and for resources, like a continued room to go home to, like money to get his two young kids out of The System, and for the pain in his legs. He is dealing with partial paralysis, you see, because someone punched him in the neck on the streets.

After, in the hallway, I cry hard, too-loud tears. All the fucking injustice. More sincerity from a man who's had harder things than most probably ever will, a man who just accepts these hard things and tries to keep walking. I want to shake him--Don't you know it's not like this? The extent of your suffering is not reality! Don't you know?!

But his suffering is reality. And it is for the world over, despite my insanely-privileged, though not quite painless, infinitely-easier position. What's universal in the human experience? Suffering, it seems. And maybe a weird joy, or gratitude.

And I become psalmist, pleading, are You blind & are You deaf, to miss these heartfelt prayers?
or are You dreadful, to allow such things? How long until justice is like a river?


you say, "the hopelessness of living & the childishness of suicide!"
but there's a call to love my brother that can never be destroyed