i say more

[isaymore-blog1]

Before they are ever well-formed words, they are elemental ideas born deep within my bowels that float up to my head where they are wed with the moans in my ears and the visions behind my eyes. This, this is hope. As of late, however, the lovers have wed only to become lodged in my throat as they attempt the well known sojourn out of my mouth, where they are wont to spill down my neck, cross the worn ridges of my collar bone, slide down my shoulder and the curves of my right arm, flick lightly and delicately over my wrist, then finish with a spectacular, surging dive into my hand. Or something like that. Now the fingertips that wrap around the pen are left ever waiting for consummation, to become wet with its lover, the ink. Now this, this is despair. Words, usually my greatest comfort, have left me without solace. Someone has come and hollowed them out so that they are no longer that full, warm embrace that lingers for hours, even days. They are no more than a whisper. A memory. Scripture – once my romping grounds, once the garden of imagining delights full of rich, dark, black earth – now is an echoing valley of scorched, white, rattling bones. Who shall sing songs to my lonely heart? What shall give speech to my clogged heart? A reincarnate psalmist, a rewriter of the psalter, who breathes new life into a dry throat, who pours fresh water into a deep well fed by ancient springs, who delights in the deep gulps and the light splashes, whose voice is resonant and sultry, who seduces me with her ability to capture the stars, write down the music of a bird, and transcribe the scent of a creamy magnolia. But better still – a person who knows the magical and ancient language of silence, who performs the dance of life and death without uttering a single word, who speaks me into life by living it alongside me. A person who binds her own words when she sees my pains in giving birth to articulate speech – that person becomes to me a Word. Words, what once I thought to be the very life of my blood, can only feed me when they have first come to life in Emmanuel. Now this, this is hope.

[isaymore-blog1]

four moments

I.

 We sat in a line on the side of a hill, faced the profile of the mountains that hid the setting sun. We wrote in poems, distilled our lives into staccato words, somehow still melodic. We wrote about ourselves, put down on paper the desires of our skin and bones, then turned toward the rising moon and made our way back to camp.

 She and I stayed up around the fire while others went to sleep. Thick, curly hair, square glasses, quick wit and solid energy, and a fear: being boring.

 She shared how she surprised herself, that when she wrote about herself she thought loving thoughts and affirmations, rather than words that cut and bit. She no longer feared being boring; living with dirt on her skin, sans makeup, and the trees ever before her had helped her appreciate the natural beauty of her being, inside and out.

 Then we made ashcakes on the fire, honey dripping off the warm bread and down our faces, and laughed as we ate under the full moon, swept by the wind, warmed by the blaze. We danced around the circle of flames, giggling at our natural, silly selves. We calmed our laughter and our spirits, and slept.

 There was peace.

 II.

 We hiked together up front. He was leading the hike, and talkative. He told me his story and of his anger. Why aren’t you angry anymore, I asked him?

 It happened one day when I was digging the lat alone, he responded. I was digging when I realized I didn’t have to be angry anymore. I didn’t have to carry the anger. So I let it go.

 Look at this, god of the mundane who works with the simple tools of digging sticks and dirt and sweat and holes. Look at this, the creation of a latrine, receptacle of the most humble human byproduct, facilitator of a flash of divine in the mind and body. And the anger can be released.

 III.

 He cried to me, I have no friends. I can’t do this. I can’t do this.

 Four days later he whispers to me, I think I can do this. I think I have friends.

 He smiles. I smile back. We carry on with our work.

 IV.

 Whales compose songs as a team. The first whale sings a melody while another listens intently, waiting her turn. When it is time, the listener becomes the singer, repeating the original song and adding a few notes to it. The pod sings together, echoing under the waves as they journey home.

 I sit with a boy and this is how it goes: He talks. I listen. He asks me a question, so I ask him one, too. He tells me another thing, asks another question. I ask him another one, too.

 We do this together each day, deep sharing and deep listening, a conversation turned into a song, repeating the original while adding a note or two. He tells me over a series of weeks, It’s frustrating that you never tell me the answer. I keep asking questions. He writes me on his last day, You taught me that all questions I wanted answered, I could answer myself.

[isaymore-blog1]

to find presence

I need a language to speak so I can say the thing, the magic word to get him to speak and move. And the magic word is silence. It is presence. It is being with. I, who love words, I am torn that a word is not the answer. A word will never be enough.

 The space between the words is what makes the word beautiful, intelligible, significant.

 So I sit in silence. I sit because my tongue is inadequate but my body, this broken body beside another aching body, is enough. Here, words are crude and limited. Supplemental. My presence is silence, space between words, and I learn a new language.

[isaymore-blog1]

Live/move/dance

My world is changing and life is hard, filled with interruptions to commonly held expectations. Thus, my words are not seamless. Time and struggle will allow me fluency in the language of my heart once again, but not today.

And still, the words of an ancient mystic speak for me: ἐν αὐτῷ γὰρ ζῶμεν καὶ κινούμεθα καὶ ἐσμέν

In English, “For in him we live and move and are.”

My translation, “For in the divine one, we live and move and are.”

‘Live’ and 'are,’ such straightforward words to me today. I live. I am. Zomen, from the Greek 'to live’ and esmen, 'to exist,’ 'to be.’ 'Move’ captures my eye as quickly as the idea of movement captivates my body. A skim through a lexicon shows the ancients used this word and its derivatives to describe a wealth of moving actions: setting in motion, leading souls, the movements of a warrior, the rocking of a cradle, removing a thing, meddling with a thing, altering, disturbing, arousing, urging on, calling into question, to be moved by, to be stirred within, to be agitated and excited. To dance.

My favorite. To dance within the divine. To dance with the divine, perhaps? Is dance included within the author’s meaning of movement within the divine nature?

All of my movements - the multiple cross country moves, the torturous crawl through grad school, the moves into different fields of work, the beginnings and ends of relationships - all of these movements, held in the divine.

And the movements I shouldn’t have made, the ones that terrified and screamed my name, the ones I resisted out of cowardice. Those, too? Yes, those especially.

Another mystic speaks for me today, so I place him in this conversation as well:

“You must learn one thing. The world was made to be free in. Give up all the other worlds except the one to which you belong.”

-David Whyte, Sweet Darkness

What divine love is this who creates me to be free? holding me so tenderly and dearly, making space for me to bruise and bump and dance my way into freedom? It is a gift too precious to give back, so I use it instead.

I am giving up and I am gaining. I am dancing. I am moving into freedom.

[isaymore-blog1]

notes from the field

I live eight days at a time without a glass mirror. For any woman who has dealt with her fair share of confidence issues, you may understand the mixed bag that this is, this dreadful gift. I am learning to ease into my freedom with more and more welcome.

 At work in the woods, in the company of my co-staff, my students, and the living world, I have a constant reflection. Standing close to a smelly teenager, I know I smell the same. Watching a boy eat his pot full of rice, I can imagine myself digging into mine with the same vigor. I sit around the fire pit immersed in my paperwork and look up, catching my breath because my co-staff’s face is caught in a golden glow and her hair alight in the setting sun, and am reminded that I’m caught in the same light, our beauty enhanced by the beauty around us.

 I watch the desert grasses bend under the burden of the snow, resting contentedly in the weighty wait of the winter. The Utah and Rocky Mountain Junipers stretch out their arms to catch the snow while the Pinion Pines are more apt to let it pass through its needles. If I’m lucky I see the slender Quaking Aspen wear it like a mantle, regal, like it was made for winter weather. The Wawa Mountains stand guard around us who live in Pine Valley, snowcapped and indifferent to our shiverings and shufflings through deep snow. What are those things in my life that go about their business of being for their own selves, and make my life precious because they are?

 I watch as tracks appear in the snow overnight as if made by an invisible, mysterious creature, but it is only the common rodent, sneaky and quick, or the American coyote who would rather be heard than seen. Once, we cross over mountain lion tracks as we trek east into a part of the field I’ve never ventured before. On a hike to a ghost town I watch a bird hop across the new snow, its feather-light and forked tracks barely making an impression. By the time I return, the evidence of its existence has melted. I am reminded of the hidden life. Of failed efforts. Of the ways we live our lives in the dark for fear that we are insubstantial.

 I am reflected in the smile on the face of a student as she greets me, excited to see me again. I see myself in the angry eyes of one who thinks my standards too high, who wants someone to blame for the heavy hurt she carries alone. I see who I am when the stress and fear turn my voice harsh, and a child cowers. I am reborn when I listen deeply and see the same child unfold her heart before me.

 I walk first in the line and carve out a path in the snow for a group of teenage boys who brag about their strength and resilience, who are afraid of their soft places and fears. The snow scares me, this deadly lightness, and I press on because they are behind me. I look down at the tracks I’m making, wondering when they’ll be covered again. I look behind me to check on the line of bundled figures carrying wood stacks and dromedaries filled to the brim because we’ve grown tired of constant wood-runs to melt the snow, we’ve tired of the constant struggle to stay warm and dry. The tracks I make are good enough for now, no matter when they will be covered again. I press on.

 As I make myself, the whole world is offering me feedback, invites me into my deepest being. I who have ears to hear and eyes to see, I am listening, I am watching. I see myself reflected in the thousands of mirrors – human faces, juniper sprigs, unblemished snow, eternal mountains, singing coyotes, untamable mustangs, aching hearts, golden sunsets – and count myself fortunate. Grateful. More precious and whole because of this work in the world.

 An infinite feast of the heart lies before me, and I see myself in it – imperfect on my own and so damn perfect as I blend into the world, in my place, here, now.

 I see myself. Thank you.

[isaymore-blog1]

let there be

In the beginning, as told to us by the book of Genesis, the nature of the divine power is such that it cannot be held back. It must go out, “Let there be light and plants and animals and humans!” and it must be shared, "Let them all reproduce and remake and recreate!" 

Divine power is relational and empowering – it allows others to become creators, too, so that trees produce nuts and fragrant flowers. Plants inch toward the sky, shooting off tubers and sweet fruits. Enormous blue whales birth three-ton calves and cuttlefish hatch with W-shaped eyes that have no blind spots. There are arthropods, cephalopods, and chordates, some of which are quadrupeds, bipeds, slitherers, crawlers, swimmers, and fliers, all giving birth and replicating themselves in some way. Some are live birthers while others lay eggs. Some have gestational periods of days, like the webbed-foot yapok that appears after 12 days, and some over a year, like the narwhal, who is born with mottled gray skin that will lighten over the years as he grows an ivory tusk. And we, humans, average about nine months in the womb before we appear: tiny, wrinkled, hideous, and screaming. 

The central motif of the creation account is this: We are creators; we are created to create. 

Fast forward some millions of years in history and a few books within the Christian Bible and we have another creation story, a re-telling of the first, although the setting is different. In territory occupied by the Roman Empire, a young Jewish woman is single and pregnant. She is known as Mary.

The beginnings are different and the same.

The first in Genesis is a narrative of abundance, generosity, and power-sharing. Life is happening. 

The second is one of paucity and vulnerability. Power is for the Empire only and wielded with a strong arm. Life is still happening. 

The divine call is the same: "Mary, be a creator with me. Let there be life within you, let it come out of you.”

Mary’s response is faithful and true to the primal word that had been echoing throughout the ages: “Let it be unto me according to your word…”

Mary has been handed down to us as a quiet wife, obedient homemaker, suffering mother. Yet, this does not reflect the fullness or the richness of Mary. Rebellious, revolutionary, quaking with fear and still asking questions, Mary is a Creator.

Mary’s emphatic YES to God is a resounding YES to her own calling as a creator, regardless of the risk of real physical and emotional safety. She co-creates with the divine and gives birth to a divine love that turns the world upside down, brings about health and healing, blurs boundaries by setting prisoners free and dining with the ostracized, and reminds the people that the power was with them all along, and not the religious/political elites.

The central motif of the second creation account is this: We are still creators; we are created to create. The power to create is a birthright, no matter sex or class or ethnicity, no matter the environment of oppression and fear, no matter the misuse of power, no matter how those in power have shaped society to profit from abuse.

The act of creating is a revolutionary rebellion against the empire that simultaneously returns us to our initial vocation, our deepest, truest, realest and best selves: Creators.

And in this act, we return ourselves to the world.

As it is with Mary, and prunus dulcis and crookneck pumpkins, capuchin monkey and pygmy octopi, authors and mystics, scientists and builders, rebels and revolutionaries, Adichie and Mary Oliver, Chagall and Almodóvar, Einstein and Curie, Dr. Luther King Jr., and all of the other wondrous and delightful Makers of the world who have enriched us with the gifts of themselves, so it is with you.

Let it be unto you according to the divine word: Let there be in you light, Let there be in you abundance and generosity and power, Let there come from you, yourself.

What is the poem breathing inside of you? What dance is moving in your bones? What sculpture is resting at your fingertips? What seedlings will your hands nurture? What conversation is living on your tongue? What song is churning in your gut? What divine love will be born from you? Let it be.

 _____

Each mortal thing does one thing and the same: Deals out that being indoors each one dwells; Selves – goes itself; myself, it speaks and spells. Crying What I do is me: for that I came.

 -As kingfishers catch fire, Gerard Manley Hopkins