writing fast 4/9-4/16

4/5 Visions Fall 4/8

The open meadow in mist
of light
cannot be touched by
gnome or knight

The droplets hang in
suspended day
layered in meaning
the sighted pay

The page is turned as
a white dust road
ancient prisoner
you may behold

The cool browed vista
that lead to this place
is still envisioned
an altered grace

The metaphor
in draught or flood
can only whisper
of the Good

Away it goes
the way of earth
a tale a cycle
a chosen birth

Promises of rain
and yield
push to resist
a barren field

To faint now in
the face of dread
dishonors faith
in what he said

I watch the seed
of life be sown
In visions cast
thrown down, outgrown

Something new
must hidden stay
in artifacts the
dead display

Seeds and sun or
clouds of rain
bring you embraced
recovered friend

California Icon

The road to freedom is still filled with symbols and sign posts. Iconography is a cry of liberation for every era and culture that engages it. The textures of orthodox, European and Latin icons are interchangeable in our smaller world.

Sojourner Truth understood the power of image. She hoped people who bought her photo card would feel that her message lived on with them;
her message of inherent dignity and freedom.

The images on which we choose to set our eyes will determine our course.
A Ukrainian girl might choose to go far from home because she believes the images of an affluent lifestyle that are now racing into her new-born culture.
A Mexican woman may risk illegal boarder-crossing to feed her family. Or her brother may have been kidnapped to feed the appetite of someone addicted to his image on the internet.

The trafficker and the trafficked alike will pray to the Mother of God.

Leaders of every generation need to rally behind liberators.

Compassion as tender as the thread on a quilt is the only thing that will construct a lasting freedom.

California Icon
Suzanna Bond
3/07
machine pieced and quilted
cotton with rayon, nylon, and cotton thread
28 ¾” x 32 ½”

Never Have Before

I wish I could craft courage
like I would a quilt.
I would cut up what I know
and stitch it into what I want.
After all the layers of desire
were bound together I could
Take my courage and lay down
and feel my fear warm,
Then melt, soft like skin
to sleep in love like I never
have before.

The Best

This is going to be a strange review.

I'm not really going to tell you what this book is about. You could see that on amazon

What I will say is that I hardly got through the first chapter before I had to put it down for a good cry. I mean a Good cry.
I could see right where this was going. I could see the truth of the story all layed out in front of me. I could tell that Lisa Samson was writing from her heart, from the past experiences of her life. Lisa has met some really wonderful people in a soup kitchen. She wrote of them in her blog "streets with dwellings" which I read up off and on all last year. But that's not what made me connect with this book at the first word. It's that I was relieved to hear a story that could capture my imagination as to how to begin the release from a self-pleasing life to one of deeper purpose and intention. (Oprah's not the only one who likes that word.)

I like this book.

I used to sing Kelly Willard's songs. One in particular that I can't even remember the name of; but amazingly, all of the words came floating to the top of my memory after I read Lisa' book last week. This song, for some Holy Spirit reason, made me weep every time I sang it. It describes what I was, what I am and what I want to be. Kind of like Lisa's book, Quaker Summer. Want me to sing Kelly's song for you?

I know a lady, who lives in a very beautiful home.
Her house was full of the most expensive things a man could own.
But her heart was empty, so very empty, deep within.

I know a lady who humbled herself before her Lord and King.
Her heart was willing to bow down and surrender everything, everything.
Her heart is full now, righteousness, peace and joy dwell within, Halleluiah!

She heard him say
Come unto me all ye who labor
Ye heavy laden, come and find rest.
Cause if you loose your life in this world
You will find new life in Me
Are you willing to give up the good things
for the best?

A Beautiful Face

I stared at the picture on the back of the truck. The faces of a man and woman encouraging me to apply for work as an ice cream salesperson.

It's hard to take a face seriously when they are everywhere.
A face is a powerful image.

The same face was looking at me from the back page ad in the magazine I was reading this morning. A stock photo! Of course! And here I had been lured into wondering if this gentile face of a 20-something woman was happy in her work. See how gullible I am? I began to imagine that because she was so good at ice cream, they had taken her picture as a reward!

We all value a beautiful face.
This magazine just helped me apply the magic of make-up to my 44 year old face. A face that has seen better days and that will gather more history that may or may not be interesting to those who greet me. Because isn't a face an introduction? Doesn't it tell us Right Now whether a person is desirable? Well, I wanna play! So I pamper the face. As my daughter and I say in unison, "Make-up is my friend"

And like all of us, I struggle to drop out of the game. I'm tired of it. I'm tired of being shallow. I'm tired of shallowness. So I do my best and forget the rest.
I've been working on a poetry zine for Freedom Day. It's a mild publication of a heavy subject. I worry that it's not attractive enough. Will people buy a copy?
I made an art quilt to show on Freedom Day. What will they think? Is it pretty? Does it look good? Why do I need it to?
I think I need it to because we value beauty. Often beauty comes from a mixture of grace and pain. And we value the coating of beauty rather than the essence of beauty. I struggle with it.
I have been praying for courage lately. I ask all my friends to pray courage for me. It takes courage to value essential beauty, the kind that is of substance rather than a passing glance. I think of Henri Nouwen who studied the Rembrandt painting for a year as the copy hung in his office. Out of his long gaze came a fruitful insight.
The value of a face is the value of the life it invites us to love.
Love, Come to us and deepen our love of Beauty.

My Body is a Cage

Have you heard Arcade Fire's Neon Bible?

Oh my.

..."set my body free
... set my spirit free"

"the identification of the culture with the church, with the evangelical church, makes us prone to an idolatry of nation. That's so pervasive it's almost impossible to carry on a conversation about it. America's founders left Europe because of nationalized churches. Now we've got one of our own, and we aren't even aware of it. So the nationalism combined with the pervasive consumerism are big problems for the American church.

We go church-shopping; we demand services of the church. The scary thing about this for me is that the vocabulary stays the same. We use all the right words, and we still keep all our doctrines in the evangelical church, but the context has changed so radically that they no longer mean anything."

Eugene Peterson
interview from Radix magazine

Svetlana's Journey

I just got home from being at an event at Cal State Fullerton: Human Trafficking, Modern Day Slavery in Southern California

The power of film once again. From Lilya 4 Ever to Trade (coming in August '07) to Svetlana's Journey, I am glad that the power of story can still move me.

I exited the large room before the crowd started the question/answer period so that I could let the effect of the movie settle more deeply. I am not about to waste the emotion. I don't want to get over it.

Funny that I hadn't remembered them until tonight. I had seen numerous young girls like this one before. Before I had seen any film. I thought back to the day we entered the juvenile girls prison in Melitopol, Ukraine. It was 1994, yet I realized only today who I had met. I had seen some of these same girls. I have met these young children who had their lives stripped from them. They had been incarcerated for all manner of violent crimes. But who had taught them? Who had created the circumstance for their desperate acts?

So much around us to numb us. Yet I won't forget them. I won't brush them aside. I thought of them. My memory of them froze them in time, yet they live on. Have any of them survived? Are any of them living free; a life worth living?

I'm sorry I didn't understand, maybe a mercy for me. But an injustice for them. What could I have done then? Nothing. But now it has served it's purpose through memory and it's serving a purpose for others like them. The thread of justice began to be spun in me from a very long time past. A thread that can never break. It must never break.

So we are writing our protest. We are writing the vision to fuel the new movement of abolition. I may be still at times, but I will never be silent again.

I invite you to join us.

www.onevoicetoendslavery.com/arts.html

make a book

I dream of it. Here's my new favorite blog site. Need to share:



This artist, Yuken Teruya takes shopping bags and creates small paper still life dioramas. It took my breath away.

photo from http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/artists/yuken_teruya.htm

freedom for you

I have liberation in hope
tied to this 3-D frame
I don't ever give up.

The spirit doesn't need me to
know his name
The blessing comes just the same
Just the same to king or queen-
replicas reverberate that distant ring.

I can't deny the breathe I have
it feeds my ears to hear it sing
My tears try to deny it
my feet seem chained
But my soul resurrects when
he sings it: please sing

"out over the past of what happened
what lives, I sing of my mansion
my father still gives
You must not imagine it too fine nor hidden
my heart is your love
I stand in the open

have you heard of the prisoners,
the slaves in the ancients?
they want you to know of their
hope; they're contagious.

I fed them.
with the same blood and bones
I was stripped, lacerated
as you are
It's shameless!

Look for me! I'm in 'the best you can do'
I'm in heartbeats and first light
in what you won't do. Say no, say a lie-
I'm in every ingenious way that you try
to know me; I'm hope and I'm true
Freedom, it's freedom
freedom for you"

Faithful To What Is

Christians embrace a shallower version of Jesus.

There is a world out there with all manner of ideas about Jesus. Frankly I don't see anything in the gospels that demands our belief; no coersion. It is given and then we can enter. Even someone who approaches God from unbelief is simply responding to the reality of Christ in the world, no matter what manner of faith he settles on.

To the humanist, Jesus' teaching allows for his faith, his opinion. But the truth of it demands action. Maybe Christians have come to faith through the influence of a disciple of Christ, but they can never remain in faith because of them. We can look at the words of any follower and find truth. But nothing can give me relationship to Christ other than Jesus himself. I choose relating. I am thankful for the opportunity. I want within myself to know Christ, even as I would want to know my husband or my children. Many do not make more of him than the gospels claim. That may be all that we need. Does God demand us to agree? Do you not believe there is a god who could make a demand? But now we come to the level of philosophical thinking that Jesus' teaching seems to take for granted. Christianity is bigger than what I ever thought it was. I can barely keep up with the Sermon on the Mount. Anything a humanist may say about Christ is no more generous than what the most traditional supplicant would say. Jesus Christ is the point and all eyes are on him.

Poems believe.

I'm finding it a little easier to just begin praying whenever I think of it. No need to launch into some preparatory salutation. I just begin. I just start where I left off. It occured to me while I was waiting for the light at the corner of State College and Lambert, that Christ is really on my side.

Why not! I believe so much about Him anyway. Why not go the whole way and imagine Him at pains to have me reach the wholeness I long for? I smiled at us, there in the car. It didn't seem to matter that I had no visual of Him. I can't truly see myself either, but I believe in my own existence.
So as soon as I come down from my philosophical heights, I feel immediately attentive. I am that much more alive, in this believing state. Suddenly, it's okay to love fiercely. It's right to be patient. It's what I am- to have a dream and to work it out. Then I talk to Him and I wonder aloud what He's thinking. I trust that I know, as I wonder. Whatever I come up with seems fine to Him. ("whatever is good, right, praise worthy; go ahead and think on that".)

I write poems and they feel like a set of weights I lift in reps. Each time I work them, I feel the muscle of my faith reaching out. I am moving through something and searching it out. A lantern is lifted above my head in the space I explore. I wouldn't go if I didn't feel safe. I'm not brave. Rather, these exercises of poems make me create a familiar landscape. I expect gifts. And I get them. I write my own "read", a good word of prayer. I write them all day long and some of them in ink.

it lies to me this
loneliness
it tells of absence then
a dead end road
i see the barricade
the type in red

but behind me a
trusted mystery
reminds me
of a deep well and
an elegant table

it's remarkable
the instinctive calm
that resides to the west
of my head
when the east longs
for the risen face
no matter
how far the expanse

Abolition

ab-o-li-tion: the action or act of abolishing a system, practice or institution:

Last night I sat and listened to Dave Batstone speak about modern day slavery. Some wonderful people are fired up to "spend themselves on behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed"

I'll be lending a hand.

Batstone has a way of invitation. He spoke with gentleness and eloquence. There is no need to "spin" the story of slavery. It's the story of women and children who are caught in forced labor no less devastating than what once ruled the US less than three generations ago. The Land of the Free is certainly not free for too many. Yes, the slaves are right here. In restaurants, city centers, and attractive travel locations. And there is a large segment of our society who indulge in the use of young women.

And this may be the last concern of an overly de-sensitized community.

As we confront racism, let us continue on to tackle the short-sighted quality of our environment. Who serves your food? What kind of coffee and chocolate are you buying? Who made your clothes? Where are you going on vacation? What are you doing there? What are the people in your life doing at parties?

We think it could never be us. The romancing of the plantation owner of yesteryear keeps us from identification.
The Abolition Movement is alive and well. Join it.

From Here, They are Harmless

There is a world of words to hear and to read and
write and breathe. And my breath to live them
Halleluiah!

And a poem to be written, some unseen wisdom
that can only be known in the telling
See!

There it spills out like water, exhales like air
the hope of a moment fixed like a star
Thank God for night, right now! Thank God for night-
the exhale of day
the space to see stars

From here, they are harmless
meant for beauty and dreams
Properly attended
companions
out of reach

Respect the unknowing and relenquish the end
that you crave; a mere motive to walk and live
An object of nature not to be known
is your intellect humbled, an inhabited home.

Invitation

Progress

This




became THIS!





(...from Vogue Knitting Winter 2006-07)

Give Me A Boost, Jesus

Shane Claiborne talks a bit about fire and brimstone. This might be the first word on hell you'd love to hear.

Unhinged

It seems to take a lot of time to live life. I think I live a writer's life without the agent and publisher with which to hang my shingle. I enter the room, with all the prayer and the best starts to begin my tasks. And what usually happens is a series of distractions and impulses that set my imagination spinning. One thing leads to something other.

I must get things done, somehow, because I'm not unproductive, but I'm not at all sure where I'm going. I try to place that into Faith and Spirit, this insecure spinning that I play. I try to be my own advacate and I tell myself supportive things, trying to keep away from perfectionism. It's hard.

What I really want to do is write down all the thoughts that seem to slip away. The desire to write feels like a storm that builds up clouds in my horizon. The atmospheric pressure mounts, I rain down a poem or a prayer and then I try to get back to my field of housekeeping or crafting. Sometimes I think I have too much time on my hands for being an unshingled author. But I have no real handle on how creative bodies of work finally come together, so I work though all of my impulses a high degree of patience.

I just keep putting it down and cutting it out and knitting it together. And then I write another poem because I can't write endings.

Check out Mark Scandrette's Soul Graffiti.

Knit Together

I have the word "rest" highlighted on my calendar. Repeated each Sunday, it seems agreeable with me.

Last weekend, I let everything go and slept on and on as the virus swept over me. I agreed with my body that I needed to rest. Sometimes it seems hokey and simplistic to go to church. My church isn't cool. It's not emerging out of anything. We mildly attempt slick and polished, the kind that's attempted by anyone with a laptop and suitable software. Our topic is usually the "Old, Old Story".

Even though I woke with a headache, leftovers of the virus, I gathered myself out of habit. It's been weirdly cold even by O.C.'s standards. Everything started out hard. I didn't get ready fast enough to eat breakfast. I arrived itchy, and cranky and impatient. I didn't feel contemplative about anything but the coffee I knew I would find in the small cloistered classroom underground.

I got my cup, ignoring how the smile I faked was not a good start, and engaged my friend Carol. Blessed Carole, one of many kind people there, who just like me, ignored every mild irratation to get to church. Her eyes got me off of thinking about my own. Her conversation, joined with others, got me off my preoccupation of me. Last week I retired. This week, I rested.

We are a strange group, I'll admit. Church people are weird. We give each other symbols like dirt. (I really got dirt from Shane - you're strangely cool, brother). We dunk each other in little indoor spas and eat dollhouse crackers to remember cosmic occurances. We suspend our disbelief in an effort to believe so much. And each week, we attempt to rest from all other normal activity. We try to knit in all we teach each other. We return to normal life, but a little weirder, a little more effected to effect change for the better.

One rest ended my illness. The other infected me with faith, hope and love.

Five Things You Don't Know About Me

Because Roy tagged me, I get to play:

1. I make the best guacamole of any anglo-saxon I know.

2. I speak Russian (badly).

3. My (favorite?) activity is knitting at the movies.

4. Madeline L'Engle is my favorite author and when I wrote her, she wrote me back. Her letter is one of my treasures. I send her a Christmas Card every year.

5. When I was little, after I woke up every morning, I would always look beside my bed for a gift received during the night. Sometimes it would happen. I think it was my mother, but since I never really knew "for sure", I always believed "today would be the day". I like waking up to a gift.

Now I tag:
Michel
Kris
Jeremy
Jeff
Robin
(my other bloggie friends have played already)

6. I don't have a lot of readers who blog...so start one, would ya!

For you

Joel, Happy Birthday!

Next

We're all interested in "what comes next" at the beginning of the year. I was able to go to the Rose Bowl with some family and we had a wonderful time. Being on the winning side helps. At my suggestion, we closed off the day with a Guiness at the Beckham Pub. Can't help having one without thinking of friends far away. I am thinking of all my friends today and really trying to take it all in. I heard news of the death of a dear lady, which has effected me deeply. It all feels so fleeting and precious. The times that I think are so "every-day" may end up meaning so much more than I ever suspected. I don't understand the heart and I don't understand love. But I need both.

I'm cleaning out the sewing room and arranging priorites. This song is going through my head and I want you to hear it. Everyone prays Wartime Prayers.

Be brave and say the prayer your heart can't quite believe. It will all add up to the greatness that we need.

Sewing

And while some women are starting with the basics, cutting from patterns or stitching a seam, others are reinventing the craft by altering their old clothing for a custom look.

For many, sewing their own clothes is a backlash against the cookie-cutter, mass-produced clothing available in stores.

...or to slow down the modern greed that comes from our media loving society.
I went clothing shopping only once in the past six months, and that was to shop in San Fransisco with my daughter. Even then I looked at labels, thinking that "USA" meant better working standards for laborers. But I can never know for sure.

So I make my own now.
My aunt Mary taught me, for which I am even more grateful for these days. I made clothes in my early twenties because it was fun. I was obsessed by it. It was cheaper and allowed me to have the special quality I couldn't afford.
Now I need the pace of sewing. I need to stop and consider what my purchase means for not only my well-endowed closet, but also for the economic machine that tells me what's "in". I don't want to play anymore.

I want the steady pace of perusing patterns. I will carefully and consciously cut the pieces. I can match up raw edges and mend mistakes. I'll get caught up in the metaphorical and end up with something warm.

Simple

Of all the beautiful knitting that could be done, it's the elemental that shines.
A plain tube with an opening for the thumb to warm my son.
They weren't hard to make, nor did they take much time. I didn't look elegant as I knit them, and I didn't feel clever, but my love is often like that.
The love I receive is often like that.

I am much too intense. I am ususally five steps ahead of the moment, searching and questioning everything at face value. This makes me a trial, I think, to those around me.
But I was so blessed to think about love as I made these simple objects for Joel. He doesn't require too much else from me these days. Or maybe what he needs is so far beyond me, I don't even imagine to be the one to fulfill it. But I finished the hand warmers in time for Christmas morning.
I can't provide much for those I love; the ones I have been given to love. But it turns out that what I can do is really a gift they give me.
And it's so simple.

Yeah for Jay

One Punk Under God
Wednesdays @ 9pm on Sundance Channel

advent anthem

Watch for the light
strain for vistas that aren't seen with sight

Watch
and keep in step
with all the earth

Call out in sigh
or surrendered sleep
for you are a child equal
to your making

and watch

Watch for sons
who devise plans of rescue
Watch for builders of cites and
soup kitchens
Menders of feathered souls
themselves oiley fringed and
inconsistant

Watch
as a seam of warmth threads through
from time and memory
Watch for light
Watch for waiting
Wait for believing in all things new

What It's All About

...our annual love feast and quilt jubilee. This should happen everywhere, all over the world.

Merry Christmas

Glee

Switch It Up

I sent off the last of the packages today after my marathon week of rehearsals and waitressing for Uncle Phil's Diner.
Matt and I had a great time and made new thespian friends along the way.
But when I picked him up from school today, he said what I was thinking- "I'm sure glad we don't have practice tonight."

Tonight was spent making risotto and putting lights on the best tree ever. (I think we say that every year). But it is the best tree ever; recently living and looking alive for the next two weeks. The tree really does represent something to me and I am very grateful to bring the large organic altar onto the carpet.

I am trying again to live at Christmas rather than lose heart and consciousness. Some of it, as we all know is important, and some of the stuff is not.
Be blessed by what you determine to give and and receive what has also been yours to have:
...and the greatest of these is love.

Gift

Purchase some gifts from Thistle Farms and help Magdelene.

What American accent do you have? Your Result: The Midland   "You have a Midland accent" is just another way of saying "you don't have an accent." You probably are from the Midland (Pennsylvania, southern Ohio, southern Indiana, southern Illinois, and Missouri) but then for all we know you could be from Florida or Charleston or one of those big southern cities like Atlanta or Dallas. You have a good voice for TV and radio.
The West
Boston
The Inland North
Philadelphia
North Central
The Northeast
The South
What American accent do you have? Quiz Created on GoToQuiz

No Room at the Diner

Come see Matthew and I whoop it up in Coley's Comedy Extravaganza.
Christmas Puns and Sentimental Moments are in store like a long listen to your favorite Andy Williams Christmas album.

I spent the waking hours and then some this past weekend making costumes. Now for the unending week of rehearsals and performances. But we're having fun getting nothing else done.

Thursday December 14 6:30 pm
Friday December 15 8:00 pm
Saturday December 16 1:00 pm and 6:00 pm
Sunday December 17 1:00 pm and 6:00 pm

Weary Mother of God, Pray for Us

I have to find my own labor-bed
Kings of the earth are too important
for the common mother

I will gather my own clean straw
Inn keepers are too distracted
to tend to a child

I am wrapping up my child in homespun
the family is far away. They
don't see the color of my newborn's eyes

His Father is unseen
The child comes from me
and the Wind of the Air

I suckle my son, the only warmth of the night
No husband can build this boy
a house which will hold Him

I am watching the days unfold
Men of influence are too self-absorbed
to acknowledge our life

My Father is unseen
This child comes to me
upon the Wind of the Air

I am strong with the hope I bear
The way of the world is not taught to me
who has yet to teach the world

I will intercede whether on tongue of prayer
Or by Just Peoples who answer callings
waiting unheralded



(The Anticipation of Christ crafts a song from even the loneliest of hearts)

A Christmas Story

Advent: Day Three

Here's an alternative to The Christmas Story, the American favorite with Ralphie, Bunny Suits and Cigar Smoking Elves:

Christ the Lord by Anne Rice

I read through this slowly last winter and savored every word. It's like gazing at a Master Painting and camping on the hard wood museum floor for days to catch the details. I would love to have a Read-Along over this. Let me know if you'll join me; I would love the community...

An Advent-ual Folk Tale

You are ancient and immediate

Holding us there. the
Moon overhead. and the
Voice breathing toward me. the
Black shadow of grass.
the moon
the voice
the shadow
Over all through all and in all
She sang that triad song
But Christ didn’t need to be said because

I move over You the grass beneath your feet
I whisper and caress you the cool of breeze
I light upon you the grey moon muscle
I open Your hand the fitted form and tender

you bend under weight of days and patient watching
You cradle witness of the funeral
you think and write a parallel network
You pace a landscape unseen

my remembrance a spongy soil



Another Advent poem

The Royal We

What can I say? Some people got it and some people don't.

This is my Best Season. I am so grateful for courage and stamina to work within it. In former times there has been the spirit of Christmas past which has been heavy on my shoulder, but not this year. It's Christmas Present visiting me lately.
I'm so grateful; have I said that?

I'm busy in a good way. I'm making gifts and enjoying that process, but all the while so mindful of the deeper spiritual growth that has come about this past few months.
I am not the same person I was last year at this time.
Not all for the better, but accepting things as they are.

When I had finally lifted my head, I found friends and family in plenty.
A royal plenty.
The preparation for Advent has already been tooled in me. I am anticipating generosity and the exchanging of Gifts.

afterward there may be a reflection of that Gift under the tree.

Can You Dig It?

Matthew was an Existential Caterpillar in fine form. Complete with the rhythm of bongo and finger snapping, he delivered his lines in Olivier fashion.
Alice in Wonderland, the Musical.
"Nietzsche!"

After the Houseguest

On November 5th
They came.
We talked with Shane.
We ate.
The fledglings, myself included, mingled about and looked harder at each other and the future of our faith.
Well, what shall we do now?

I think we agree that we are meant for each other. We can only really live if we stick together. Use whatever you've got. Enjoy the ones that are around you, they are really quite unique.

It's okay to dream out loud and meet the ones who stir up our dreaming. Then we wander off and remember the time we had together.
23 of us.
Maybe like a church.
Maybe like the start of something, like Jesus was true.
Maybe a way to feel the love we need to feel in order to change.

...and here's a couple photos of Joel and Karin that Cole took.

Shane's coming

Wow, this is great! I got to meet him @ Soliton last August. I had read his book over the summer and then handed it to three of my friends. We thought we'd try to hear him speak next time he was in town.

Well, one thing lead to another and now it really is a mini-soliton (is there any such thing...?)
here in Fullerton. Though it's a little weird to not know how many people will actually come, there are a few extremely joyful senior guys who are inviting everyone.

Stats:
Joel Bond's House
339 N. Drake
Fullerton, Ca. 92836

Sunday November 5th
5-7pm

Come.
We shall watch events unfold...

garment

When you tend to a child be gentle
Before you approach
say a prayer
Tender skin to match a tender heart
Too fresh for self-preservation:
a word a child can't know

When you speak to a child be slow
Before you breath in
accept what you hear
Tender past that never leaves you
Can grow again a-right:
a hope a child can't deny.

Cloth a child in cloth made of mercy
Feed a child the steady diet of plenty
Lilies of the field
Birds of the air

The Poverty of Dissention

I have been challenged this year in a way that I thought I would welcome. I have put myself in places of discussion that has broken down some of the tired and fruitless ways of being in community and faith.
I have crossed boundaries that kept out love and yet am confronted by the lack of connection within my own fences.

I have been reading Wendell Berry and he is illustrating community for me in the context of the deep social contracts which are grounded in marriage, extending to the preciousness of trust and forbearance for those who gather together.
This comes on the heals of discovering the conditional description read in one of Brennan Manning's books: the poverty of uniqueness.

Berry is a dissenter, an observer of community that can only offer his true observation from within the bounds of community. He says only community has the grace within it to shape it's change. A dissenter must speak out the truth that can offer fruitful change. A dissenter must remain within the community it criticize in order for the community to trust what the dissenter observes.
If the community doesn't trust the words of the dissenter, then membership is broken by their inattention or ambivalence.

It's feels like hard work to be a dissenter. Within even the best and most affectionate communities, the dissenter must be respectful of the irregular paces she might put them through. A seed planter is not experiencing the same fellowship as the harvesters.
Artist and poets who are often dissenters, if not always, create their own sub-communities in order to teach each other the proper social steps which engage the encompassing community.
I am coming to this artful community with more energy and purposefulness lately. I have to name myself Artist. No one else can.
I must also deal with the dissenting quality of an artist, who is not so named to satisfy a hunger for notariaty or position, as I am learning, but merely a word of description.
People may admire art or poetry for the mystery of it, but if doesn't effect change, the community is itself poverty stricken. Artistry is not always rewarding. It has within it a mysterious fellowship. An artist can find her life within that fellowship. Each unique person, no matter what their labor, has their fellowship which then nurtures the other members.
There is an interdependence within the community that must loosely grasp by respect the unique poverty of each of its members. We don't belong to each other because we must, but because each one of us contains a unique gift with the freedom to give when it's fruition comes in season.
Even if it's the gift of dissenting.

Happy 17 Jacob

Alain and I warmed up the Industrial Cottage and produced a shirt for our friend.
serendipity ruled the day as I had a vintage pattern from '68 and yardage that I bought in Carmel last summer. We made the v-neck of Jake's dreams.

Credit to Alain for the idea and impute. He can sew now, putting in the hours for pinning, cutting and machine operation.

Get Yours

Support the Protest

vapored fresco

You walk barefoot silent along dark stone, the infinite
come small
You come years and years through musty kitchen dust
brushed off
You shape hair and smile in chorus sung broadly, plaited
wax and fibers twining
You kiss tender beads to marble, standing, catching,
caressing music
You tell plays and swinging hammers, clay to seaglass
treasured findings, worshiped Godhead

You bear children
You seed kinfolk
You smile broadly
You pass doorframes
You see moonlight
You crown princes
You cover homeless

You voice sighs in waiting rooms, cast peppered, wrought
and bloody
You yearn singular life, our one and only, scattered seed
born; multiply many

You wait
You watch
You live
You listen manifest in new days stretched membrane thin
to press your lips I'm hearing

-written 8/11/06

Some Things Worth Saving

My friend gave me this. She received a box from her mother's friend. It had all the scraps of calico purchased from the local department store where she lived in 1960's Iowa. Amoungst the quirky fabric was this child's pattern tenderly folded in a clear brown sugar plastic baggie (the elder saved everything of use. Recycling before it was a planitary caution) To get warmed up for my Industrious Cottage of sewing my own garments, I made up the vintage pattern.

I'll post the results when the buttons are sewn...

A Group

The first Knitting Blog Group I ever was excited to join is now posting some great creations by fellow Elizabeth Zimmerman Enthusiasts. I thought I would show off a few of my own on this bit of turf.