Church Closets

Do you stand where I stand with your hand in my hand, with your side by my side as I look on with eyes wide? Do you hear what I see and do you see what I hear because I’ve gone far too long without anyone else here and the silence that once taught me has now come to haunt me as my privatized cries fall on deaf ears. For I was under the illusion that if I hide my confusions that they’d all eventually go away, but if I disguise my face to hide my pain I’ll never obtain any spiritual aid and the tragedy of a story untold is that of a heart which alone grows cold beneath the secret skeleton’s chest - a rotting rib cage that dies yet never rests.

If only church closets could tell the stories of the souls that die inside them. Of those who feel the need to hide that which they believe defines them only to find that secrecy is that which truly confines them to suffocate in a shallow grave of claustrophobic head-space. For we all supposedly have skeletons in the closet, but what if we’re the ones who’ve decomposed inside and the bones are all that’s left to hide of what used to be our closed off minds?
Because the secrets we keep in church closets deep are of the most perilous kind - we lock ourselves away just so they can’t say whether or not we’re worth God’s time. We die in isolation to give you the gratification of the thought that we might be just like you.

Did you ever come to think that our stories might be important too? The stories that nobody wants to hear, the stories that everyone fears, the stories where we finally tell you about the giant pink elephant that’s always been standing here! Stories where the moral is that you’re basically wrong, that it’s finally time to change up your song, that our hiding is the lying that you’ve been living for so long.

And we know it’s not the whole story you’ve missed, but when our characters become complex it’s those chapters you skip because when the time bomb finally begins to tick it’s so much easier to just plead ignorant.

        So do you stand where I stand with your hand in my hand, with your side by my side as I tell our stories with eyes wide? Do you hear what I see and do you see what I hear because I no longer want to go on without anyone else here.

Gray

In the beginning there was nothing, yet our concept of nothing always seems to look a lot like something - it looks like He’s already started.
         In the beginning man was alone, yet he also wasn’t: we count fellowship with God as not being alone, yet He Himself doesn’t.

So why is that beginnings seem to very gray? A fact that we all vaguely recognize, but would never really say.

We’ve talked about the beginning of earth as well as the beginning of man, and no one would say that a murderous brotherhood was God’s idea of a standard family plan.

         Then there’s the fact that Abraham was an uncircumcised pagan and Isaac wasn’t really his firstborn son. Jacob lied, cheated, and fought with God, yet always somehow won, and this father of the nation of God was also the second son.

Politics

                Give me liberty or give me death says the supposed commander of his last breath – the words of a foot soldier who believes he’s king, who thinks his marching orders might actually change everything.
                What’s funny is that his enemy thinks the very same thing. He dies with a smile while with his last breath he sings songs of freedom that reflect that of the very men that killed him.
                When will people realize that they actually aren’t so different?

Poets In Autumn Tour in New Orleans

                        This October 7 the "Poets In Autumn" tour is coming to New Orleans! If you are a poetry buff or love theatre this event is something you'll want to see. This show will feature Jackie Hill Perry and Preston Perry, Janette...ikz and Ezekiel Azonwu, as well as Chris Webb. These guys are some of the best Spoken Word artists in the business and perform every couple of years at the biggest spoken word shows out there with more than 3,000 people attending live.
                       

         

                  So why am I telling you all this because (1) I am excited that I am going myself and that VIP tickets are so affordable! (2) I will be there with a merch table selling my poetry books! I will be selling them a little cheaper than you can find them on the internet and you'll get to see a great show. I'll even have some book marks and post cards for you to pick up. You can find tickets here as well as share the event with your friends and tell them about it. Can't go? Still share this with your theatre, literature, and all your artsy friends. 

Why I Wrote a Book...

             So, as many of you may or may not know, I write – a lot. Not just missionary newsletters either. I usually write poetry and have been doing just that for the past 12 years. What many of you may not know is that about 8 years ago I almost published a book. It was going to be a random collection of poetry that I had written when I was 16 of about 100 something poems which I considered to be from my best writing streak. I had submitted it to an editor and it had been looked over and we had a meeting. Now, if he was just stroking my young and fragile ego I will never know, but he said that my work was really good and had quite an original voice. Part way through all that, it fell through and I ended up not publishing and less than a year later I ended up moving to South America and my life completely changed.  

                Did any of you know that my plans before that of becoming a missionary were to be a writer? I even started my first novel when I was 13 – not saying it was that great or anything, but I wrote it and I was 13. When God started guiding me towards missions I thought it was just something that I had to give up – you know give up my dreams and take on the dreams that God had for my life. I just didn’t get that God was taking away my dreams, but adding on to them. As the years went by and my professional writing dreams far behind me I actually started writing less in general. The thing is I hadn’t started writing with any intention whatsoever of people reading my poetry – it was a dream that came along later. I started writing because someone made an offhand comment that writing how I feel might help me to feel a little better. So, as I began to write less and less I really began to miss it. But these things are like muscles – you stop doing something for a while and it’s hard to start back up; you remember how but it takes time for your muscles to get back into shape.

                So as the years went by I tried and tried and tried to get back into writing and every once in a while I’d come out with something, but I just never really did get back into the swing of it. I kept trying nonetheless and then I felt God pressing upon my heart to finish what I had started. To take the idea I had originally for my book - which was to be an autobiographical poetry book about coming out of depression – and finish it and publish it. So that’s what I did

 

 This is the name of my first book - "Soul CPR" and it is a book of poetry about my journey with God through years of depression.

Closing In

              I remember the day that Alex Haley changed my childhood. That night long ago in the land of yesteryear sitting on my living room floor staring into the TV watching the man from “reading rainbow” in chains. Awakened to the marvel that people in different countries have different sounding names. Saddened by the fact that what people don’t understand they often try to change. And troubled by the thought that my skin color was linked to a heritage that brought me shame.
                I looked like the bad guys! I hated the fact that I even looked like I was on their side. The oppressors were not the ones with which I identified and thus that movie marked my very young life.

                

                Growing up I knew people of every shape and color – from black to Mexican to Asian; from family to friends – and I loved every last one of them.
                Their differences didn’t scare me and I didn’t find them weird – I thought they were some of the most beautiful people to every have appeared. My parents happily confused as to the type of child they had reared. I never even realized that I was the one considered “socially weird.” Thinking that all people are equal is a moral to which many people find difficult to adhere.

                

             And now I’m all grown and my husband isn’t white. Maybe he’s not black, but his Latin brown is close enough in societies frightened light.
              My children will be mixed, lacking blonde hair and America’s blue eyes; and I often wonder how they’ll be treated in their mother’s countryside.  Speaking a different language and probably accented English, will they be treated differently by the country they share blood with?

                

               Why is this the world we live in? Why is this ignorant bliss something people are willing to sit in.
                No one speaks and no one shrieks as long as the silence holds them steady on their pinnacled mountain peaks.
                It finally hit home. I know it happens, but I thought “this ain’t Chicago.”
                I thought we were the south. I thought we were kin. I thought people had learned to look past one’s skin. So many people unknowingly have blood with black in it. 

Fantasy Fiction

               I am a nerd. It all started out in childhood with Superman, Batman, and Spiderman – your classic alien, outcast, mutant mutiny against the machine that we call society. My parents had birthed a fan girl.
                I fell in love with that imaginary place we hide in our brain where the underdog on the outskirts of society was actually something more than just a victim. Where the people´s hero was somehow also the system´s villain. “The man” never could handle things that seemed all too different.
                And then there are references that few will actually even get about adopted adolescent aliens and the Scooby gang marveling over “9^th wonders,” an old book of shadows, and meteor rocks over after school coffee at the Tallen. They were the people and places that told you you didn´t have to be all growed up to save the world or have everything figured out in order to make a difference. It´s surprising how people wonder why we applaud the non-existent. They take those that seem forgotten and make us feel significant. And it wasn´t even their superhuman ability that we envied, but their unparalleled unity and undeniable calling to some higher duty.

           
                   Our younger selves understood more than we give them credit for. They knew that ideals both did and had to exist. That people are so much more than what so many are impressed with. And that the “it” people are many times the ones that few times get “it.”
                   Comic books and pulp fiction remind us that we may not actually know absolutely everything. That things are not always as they seem and that heroes don´t walk around in a super suit and wings. Heroes could be reporters, scientists, photographers, and millionaires. Even a group of teenagers could protect us from things crawling out of the mouth of hell or whatever may wander the deserts of Roswell.
                  And just like when they “saved the cheerleader and saved the world” through the life of one man humanity was cursed yet through the death of Another life was reimbursed.

Earthly Sadness

               The earth mourns with us as death right splits us with lightning like sadness that knocks our hearts right out of our chests in a thunderous opaque explosion.
                To see a grown man cry is almost as if nature has committed a crime like when the sky strikes a cedar cracking it right down to its pride.
                It´s a hard thing to learn that even nature has weakness and as sure as oceans have beaches there are limits to our strength. It´s hard to accept that even life has its length.

                

              So just like when the heavens cry right over us and we run and hide under some make-shift shelter when life up and dies taking us all by the most unfair mortal surprise we once again don´t know if to run or sit or simply just stand and be wet.
                It´s a hard realization that we simply don´t know just how much life we get. No one knows just where their margins have been set.

              
                   Just as every storm has its goals to be met, I hope my life can say the same as I fade away into the sunset. 

Misery Loves Company

               Back and forth you go each day between crippling fear and saving grace. Back and forth in sickening sway trying to side with what makes you feel safe.
                It´s troubling how you´re willing to take someone´s grace just in order to secure your own place, and even more troubling how you´re willing to give up faith just in order to fill some manly mandate.

                
                Can someone help me understand just exactly what´s taking place? I never did get if this was caused by subtle bewitching or self-loathing hate. How and why do you claim to be wise with your eyes oh so very full of despise? Are you even aware of what your price implies? Because it would seem that you yourself only pay with lies. You can´t even keep the same rules you seek to destroy everyone else with.
                Maybe it´s not intentional and I know we´re unconventional, but that´s no excuse to try and change us which deep down is actually an effort to cage us. What you´ve wanted from the beginning simply was to enslave us.
                Yet honestly nobody wants to be the company to your misery. 

Fall of the Kiskadee

There once was a bird never meant to be caged –
A marvelous creature beyond beautifully made
Made with colors so amazing it would seem palace decoration,
Yet with fight comparable to warrior determination.
Her song so beautiful that it serenated kings,
Yet she held enough strength to ignite fire with her wings.

While tying her down is nothing near an impossible feat,
Caging in beauty is an undeniable atrocity.
What once was pleasing becomes rather beastly.
The strength that lifted her beauty to soar
Becomes the voice in which her hopelessness roars.

Slowly but surely, her song fades into the floor,
And all the colors lose their allure.
No longer does she even fight against the cage door –
Once envied by kings and now pitied by the poor.

Heroes Die

I want to be just as Thee, storming with power in a raging sea.
Taking on hell and Hades with the roaring fire I´ve seen You making.
Let them tremble at our feet just as they tremble when You speak.
They must learn to fear the weak for we were transformed in lightening streaks.

Yet Hades is fought down in hell – a match with death you´d never live to tell.
Clean each other´s trembling feet and listen to Me as I speak.
Bravery is on the coward´s lips and he dies because of it. Try not to speak so much, but just try to live as such.

Bravery is more than the craze of power, but is knowing to accept your own humbling hour.

If you want to be just as Me you must try on My death in order to have authority.

Anthem of the Preacher´s Son

              “Vanity of vanities,” says the son of the preacher man; he said “yes” to everything and not once took a stand.

              

               Never again was such haste taken in simply just wasting away – life as loved under sun scorched haze. A life of searching for one´s own way.
                Searching for the beat of one´s own drum – the beat of the heart that beat his mind numb. Adding up everything to find a poorly given sum.

              

                 Everything and nothing all at one time; everything he looked for with nothing to find. The very feeling of being alive strangely enough killed his mind, the very guarantee of death over time. Slowly but surely being eaten by lies.

                
                   Now all is said and finally done and we come to find that the preacher has won, for it may be that all is vanity, but that which we need can only be found beyond the sun.

King´s Kids

                Sometimes I feel like this is the best way that I could spend my days if only it could last for always. I´m willing to pay to do this forever.
                I see the children of the King as if they were mine to up bring and I would die happy doing that one very thing.
              Spending everything to give them my best even if it takes away a few years rest – I know that doing this I´ll have no regrets.

                

                 You see, all my dreams can be summed into one – that they can walk farther than I could ever run. I feel like they´re the reason I am what I´ve become. 

Bucket Wish

I never thought I´d write like this.
I never thought I´d fight like this.
I never thought I´d actually want to open up my eyes like this.

Have you ever had a dying wish?
What is at the end of your list?
What do you lie in bed regretting that you never did?

I don´t want to be that scared little kid, nor be an elder well hid.
I want to be someone who´s free
and soars through the air like the great kiskadee.
I want to be the person that hides away in my dreams.

Have you ever closed your eyes and been challenged by what you see?

A Mile in My Own Shoes

I want to be the me I needed –
The person for whom my younger self begged and pleaded.
Someone who was willing to see that my soul had a dying need even though I´d never dare speak  it.

When I was young I wanted to be seen, I wanted to be heard, and I wanted to bleed.
I didn´t want to hide my pain but every day I felt slain by the fear that kept me back.
No one ever seemed to be aware of how easily I fell off track or how my insides screamed for just a little bit of slack.

Now I´m on the other side, and I don´t want to be the one who fails to see when someone is about to derail in the same way that I once did.
Many times I can see what many think they´ve hid.
Someone has to tell them that it doesn´t matter what they did.
I so desperately want them to know that God´s love is not some trick.

Maybe it´s time to show the things that I for so long hid – maybe it´s time that I myself do what I wish someone else did.

Misfit Equality

                Has anyone ever tried to tell you who you are? Tell you what to believe and what to see in the stars? Everyone knows what I once was, but that doesn´t mean what they think it does.
                Looking into my past will never show you my present even though it may explain some things that my words haven´t.
                I never wanted to be “out and proud;” I never could fit in with that crowd. Now I´m not saying that we all should hide, but the thought doesn´t sit well with me to be proud of pride.

                For the longest time I hid who I was inside fearing that if I didn´t I would take a side that´s unappealing to you. Yet I´ve found myself in an intriguing position – a position that appeals to neither of the battling groups. I´m a person that understands what it´s like in both sets of shoes.
                I side with a nearly nonexistent group, and because of that I think that you can learn from me too because even though we don´t agree I still respect and love you.

My Vows in Retrospect

             I had always wanted to write my vows, but I had no idea what to say and little idea how; and when the time came to finally think and I finally thought that I was ready tragedy struck and one of those that inspired my life expired and breathed her last on this earth and with her death waned any chance that inspiring words could in my mind be arranged and I said the traditional “I do´s.”

               
               So, without further a due, this is what I would have liked to have said to you the day we said “I do.” On that day we promised to never leave no matter what we go through. On the day that God trusted me to be your ideal help. This is what I would have liked to have said:
                I am not perfect. Yet, even so, there are no words to describe  just how hard I will try to be everything that God has asked of me – please be patient because Proverbs 31 is not easy.
                I´m honestly scared out of my mind of failing and at the same time driving you crazy – my violence is an outburst of my perceived insufficiency. And I really wish you knew that it´s not you who did this but it´s something so well hidden that I myself don´t even get it.
                I would have liked to have warned you that my love is different – no matter how hard I try I´m just not much of a princess. But instead of staring at all that my love isn´t you´ve helped me to learn what it is. If nothing else, it´s definitely genuine. It´s not based in things that change or conditioned to things staying the same but committed to the promise I made.
                And try as I might I´m just not romantic and I never really understand your antics, but I absolutely love that that´s who you are. 

Shakespeare´s Mistake

                Have you ever wondered how it is that arranged marriages worked for thousands of years and no one ever killed themselves?
                I have a theory – a slightly controversial epiphany – that Shakespeare may have ruined us. Even so, I know it´s not entirely his fault but rather a misunderstanding that stemmed from the human heart. What was meant to be the tragedy of Romeo and Juliette people seek out as the reality of their romance. People see their feeling as something worthy of their death. If they can´t give what they feel a chance they are willing to take on eternal rest only to find that their eternity they´ve wrecked.

                

                Since when has romantic love been the goal of human life? Is falling madly in love the only thing for which we strive? Is that what decides if we live or die? And is whether or not we marry what our happiness is defined by? If that´s the case then the gospel I´ve read had died, and the Savior that we all love lived a very depressing life. So if I´m single and never have kids, will my life´s purpose go unfulfilled?

                
                      So do you think Shakespeare would take offense if I said that he started the sexual revolution?

Lost at Peace

                There are days that I fall under the misguided impression that what I do is normal; an impression that I hold dear to my heart no matter how much they try to convince me that it´s horrible.

               

                So, what´s it like to be a missionary? It´s deciding to just stop caring what everybody thinks. It´s suddenly realizing how much your own sin stinks. It´s almost like taking on the weight of the world because you can´t stand to watch the way they all sink.

                Like a sailor who answers sea´s calling we live life in joyous mourning that is confusing to the masses.
                We don´t seem to fit anywhere, neither in land nor in air, and only water will take us. The rain no longer bothers us because we love the water that made her, but boy are there rainy days.
                We trust in our anchor that we call “hope” as waves toss us to and fro and the whole world tells us that it´s time to abandon our old beat up boat. Even so, we always go and will not stop if she still floats. No one understands our commitment to our oath.
                Not only you, but sirens too with their song so dark and long draw our souls to all that´s wrong wanting us to abandon ship – not to mention that she won´t stop until she finally sinks it.
                And that´s when we realize that we were made for this – while all the rest lunge overboard our ears don´t even itch. All we do is look at the stars and wonder why they take us so far with nothing visible in sight. All we see is the Milky Way making path in darkest night.
                So, will we die at monstrous sea? Is it even land we seek? We don´t exactly blame you for not understanding just how much this journey means. Many find it hard to grasp that treasure is not what we are after when we have the only existing key.
                Only a sailor would understand why we love this watery beast. Just like old Tom´s unbelief you would have to touch our peace in order to really see.

               
                   So I guess what I want to describe to you is a little about what we see and a lot about what we feel – “woe is me if I do not preach” the good news to all of thee.
                This is not about adventure or what may feel exciting. This is my own mundane way that I discovered I was free – a discovery I got when I finally realized that my freedom had very little to do with me.

Painfully Honest

                Have you ever dared to argue with God? Has He ever had to tell you to watch your mouth because you nearly cursed Him out? Have you ever noticed that it´s those very types of fights with your spouse where you finally seem to figure each other out?
                Those days that I screamed ´til my lungs couldn´t breathe are the very dark days that brought me most healing – that one good pressurized shout of mutiny when I finally let my heart out. And even though I know that most of what I said was probably wrong what I´m trying to get at is that I was finally honest.

                Have you ever told God the truth? That you don´t really believe all that He says about you. That in the back of your mind you´ve always wanted sin, and at the bottom of your heart you really do blame Him. That you even felt alone in the midst of His presence.