Today

I can hardly breathe. We walked to our polling place today. Me and the three children. They know that something called "history" is being made today. Exactly what that is and how it will take shape is beyond them right now. It is beyond me, too. We walked into the booth together. I pushed the individual buttons and put my finger on the "cast your vote" button and each child, ages 7, 4 and 2 put their little hands over mine and pushed down. We cast our vote for change, for hope, for education, for equality, for clean water, for an end to poverty, for their college education, for my retirement, for an end to war, for peace.
"In this unlikely story called America, there has never been anything false about hope."

What did you vote for today?

In peace

photo by Maciej Dakowicz

Thank you Victor Turner

The space between. Chasing the dragon. Ecstasy. Liminality.
I should probably thank Arnold Van Gennep since he first wrote about the liminal. So shout out to Van Gennep. But I learned about liminality while studying Victor Turner in high school and then again in college. And I became obsessed with not only understanding liminality but in living it - constantly. Van Gennep described the three parts of a liminal experience, most often found in rites of passages where the participant changes during the ritual. The three parts are: separation, liminal period and reassimilation.

I grew up in the Baptist church where it was common to "catch the Holy Ghost" and dance wildly and scream and cry. It wasn't a Pentecostal church, mind you, speaking in tongues was firmly frowned upon. The white-clad ushers would circle the parishoner and wrap them in a human cocoon to keep them safe and prevent them from bumping into someone else in their altered state. I never found these moments to be scary or frightening. In fact I was fascinated. I would watch the person's face to see if they were really there. I wanted to know where "they" went and who or what was in their place. And I always remembered the moment when they came back and became themselves again - when they reassimilated. Always completely oblivious to what just happened. As I got older I began studying the religions of Africa and the diaspora. And I learned about spirit possession and people being "mounted" by the orisha. Now this was no different than what I saw in church growing up. And I longed to have the experience. I would sit in church and be moved but I would cry silently or feel myself being overcome by some perfect presence. I never jumped up and down or danced wildly. And somehow felt that my religious experience was "less than" others. That I was not as devout. Not as able to achieve Grace. I began to seek that "other" experience in various ways.

I was a smoker, a drug dabbler, a pretty decent drinker. I never achieved full promiscuity thank G-d but that didn't stop me from trying. I was moving from addiction to addiction trying to get closer to Grace. It never showed.

The next step was childbirth. Now that is an ecstatic experience. Wrong. My births were not ecstatic experiences. They were hard and scary and released ancient demons I thought long since killed or at least beaten into submission through years of denial and beer. And there I stood three children and 36 years later still chasing the dragon, searching for Grace. And then I got cancer.

Nope, that didn't do it for me either. I mostly slogged through cancer trying my best to get from one day to the next and to stay warm. Like most women, I was so busy living my life that I missed the opportunity to reflect upon it.

Now that the dust has settled and I have some time to look back I can see that Grace has always been with me. I mistook it for grace - little g. I wanted the big operatic ending. I wanted to jump up and down and dance wildly and speak in tongues. And then I did what Sweet Honey in the Rock told me to do: I got still. And realized that I am not a dancer, a screamer, a tongues-speaker. I am a quiet, internal, intensely private child of Grace. Chasing the dragon I was always behind it. Now I just walk through my life and let Grace find me. And she always does.

May Grace find you today.

in peace

photo by Savage Land Pictures

Rising to a Challenge

Okay, my friend Doula Momma challenged her readers to post six things about ourselves that we have not already posted on our blogs. Well that could be a great many things!

1. I am going back to school.
2. I HATE doing dishes and will put off doing them for as long as humanly possible.
3. I am physically unorganized and mentally too organized.
4. I want more children but know I cannot have any more and this makes me sad.
5. I scream at my kids - Alot.
6. I am socially liberal and morally conservative while respecting other's rights to make their own choices, I still wish they would agree with me!

I don't think I know six people with blogs - tells you I need to get out more, so I will post this on my facebook page!

But I am tagging my sista - Minkgirl, so tag girl, you're it!

in peace

Been Gone Such a Long Long Time.....

And most of you know why. I missed writing the blog. I found that it got me out of myself and somewhere else. It sort of purged my soul a bit. Fortunately I haven't spent too much time feeling sorry for myself the last year. I looked at the calendar this morning and realized that this Saturday it will be a year since I was diagnosed with cancer. I gratefully sit here cancer-free! And I am still tired. Someone inside of me, probably that little girl seeking approval, decided to fill her schedule to the brim so she could make up for lost time. For the weeks she stayed in bed knocked out from the chemo. Or the weeks she slept upright because she couldn't lay down after the open chest surgery. Or the many many naps she took after driving herself to and from radiation therapy for six weeks. The guilt at being sick. A wasted emotion - guilt. So, I cut back this week. I cancelled appointments that I was too tired to keep. I let go of some "obligations" that I had made when feeling invincible. And I apologized to myself for thinking I was "less than" if I didn't do it all. Bottom line: My body is still healing, but more importantly my spirit is still healing and it needs its energy and its wits about it for the next evolution.

in peace

Why I love it here

I've been down on New Jersey. I have to admit it. Being born and mostly-raised in New York, I had an appropriate air of superiority over the Garden State. Gleefully admitting that I had never been through the Holland or Lincoln Tunnel until I met my husband, who is foreign so didn't know any better than to live here (insert nose stuck up in air here). But he was smarter than me. And just when I begin to lament our high property taxes and unbearable lack of car insurance, New Jersey backs full rights for gay partnerships (a marriage amendment would have been better) and becomes the first state to abolish the death penalty.

I love this state!

Why No Hilary?

This is the question a friend asked me after my pro-Obama post. And my answer was not deep or filled with facts and backup statistics. My answer came from my gut: "I just don't trust her." I cannot believe that someone who has been in Washington for as long as she has been and involved in campaigning for both herself and her husband does not owe everyone something. She has more sponsors than Star Jones' wedding. She does not get to walk into the White House her "own woman." She is owned and those debts are going to be paid with our tax dollars, with our health care and our education benefits. I don't trust her. And I am not sure how she can repeatedly mention that she has the scars to show that she has been a healthcare advocate for the last 20 years. She hasn't advanced health care at any point in her tenure as Senator and she got spanked when she tried to do it as First Lady. And I am to believe that somehow she is going to be able to do it as President? Sorry. When a player loses that many games they get fired or traded.
Of course, all that being said, I am a Democrat and I will vote in the final election for a Democrat. I just really hope I won't be voting for her.

The Reckoning

I have been thinking a lot about death lately. Not in a horror movie kind of way, but in an it's-inevitable-might-as-well-think-about-it, kind of way. Death and taxes. And for a thing that is absolute we don't spend a great deal of time pondering it. I mean really pondering it and not in a goth, depressed way. I have wanted to know why it is I am so afraid of death. And I think I have narrowed it down to three very clear reasons:
1. I am afraid of pain. Whatever way I exit this life it may be painful. Karma dictates, at least when it comes from the mouths of self-righteous religious people, that you die as you have lived. I don't know if that is definitely true. I would like to imagine myself worthy of death in my sleep at the age of 90. But the dealer of the karmic cards may have seen a few more transgressions than I would care to admit. And so that leads me to my second fear.
2. I have no control over the time. Well, I do, but that is part of that karmic thing and we learned in Beetlejuice that those who take control over their exit come back as social servants in the afterlife. I could die at any time and in any way. And that uncertainty makes me cautious sometimes and a little on edge. It can cast a pall over my day if I spend too much time thinking about it. Why should I even leave the house? But I do leave the house. And mostly it is because of reason #3.
3. I worry about the people I will leave behind. This is the fear that really floors me. What about my kids? What about my friends? What about that nice lady at the dry cleaners? Not to say that all of these people will not go on without me - of course they will. And the world will continue to spin on its axis. But there will be people I love who will be sad. People I love who will be angry. And part of my job as a mother, wife, friend, child, sibling is to bring happiness and to comfort sadness. I cannot bear to be the cause of pain.

That is my fear. Death is hardest on the people left behind. I let go of thoughts of heaven and idyllic afterlives. I believe in karma and reincarnation, through those I have touched, loved and birthed. I do not believe that when I leave this earth I will go some place else to await my next body. I think I will go to sleep. And while I love the idea of G-d, I am not so sure there is one involved in my every move (psst, read my friend Minkgirl's post entitled "Heavy" on this topic). So my prayers for peace get exalted to a variety of dieties: Jesus, Krishna, Buddha, Kwan Yin, Yemaya and Bob Marley. May the light they bring to my life help me see the right choices, so karma is a silent sleep at 90 years old.

in peace