Tag: rising strong

Easter Hope Rising

/ Lanae / Leave a comment Featured

The stories of Holy Week and Easter season carry such rich imagery and always seem to lend themselves to deep metaphorical reflection and visioning, for me. One doesn’t have to name oneself as Christian to draw from this deep well of living metaphor, or to see how it uncannily, without fail, reflects the troubled, complex, both/and state of (my) humanity and the world in these quarantine days – darkness and light, grief and grace, loss and abundance, co-existing all together, backlit by hope rising.

Something in me continues to love keeping the Easter vigil, especially in those deep wild still hours of the night, and even though we couldn’t keep the Easter vigil at our church this year, we had the invitation to keep vigil at home. And so I purposed to keep vigil through the night til the morning, through those deep wild still hours … Prepared candles and incense and a place to sit in silence and a place to write as the Spirit so moved.

And the Spirit so moved, in this way! This is a wrenching, raw cry from the deepest places of my heart and soul, bowed in grief, lifted in grace – for me and for the world, hope for me and you and the world.I hadn’t necessarily intended to share this poem publicly, because it’s so nakedly personal – these are some of my deepest aches, vanities, and longings, core wounds and spiritual struggles. The old patterns, old pains, that keep rising up as I keep peeling layers upon layers, seeking deeper healing, truer, freer living … this quarantine Easter season has brought so much to the surface, for me, for us all, for our world …
Yet it seems right to be open, if there is anything that may speak to other hearts, too.

With much love and hope, I bow and share this from the Spirit with you, beloved ones!

Rise, Leave the Graveclothes

It is time to leave the tomb
I have been there a while
Not alive but dead to life deepened
                        dead not alive
                        not alive, not risen
                        not living nor rising
In a tomb
                   I have been
It is time to arise
                   leave this tomb
                   return no more
                   to this place
Rise, leave the graveclothes behind
                   seal the tomb
                   return no more
                   to this death
 
Resentment, toxic envy
                  bitterness of seeing others
                  richly clothed in honor and influence
                  you have sought
                  but feel nakedly unknown
               Graveclothes
                                        nothing but graveclothes
               Rise, leave the graveclothes
                                        Seal this tomb
                                        free, walk in light
                                                  clothed new
 
Praise and honor craved
                    from some, stories
                    and needs carried
                    unmet, not to be met
                   still worn, worn to tatters
               Graveclothes
                                        nothing but graveclothes
               Rise, leave the graveclothes
                                         Seal this tomb
                                         free, walk in light
                                                    clothed new
 
Desires to have your words
                    known, esteemed, quoted
                    to carry weight in the world
                    and ring wild into the Night
               This want to be a thought leader
                              a spirit leader
                              a standard bearer of belovedness
              Graveclothes
                                     nothing but graveclothes
              Rise, leave the graveclothes
                                         Seal this tomb
                                         free, walk in light
                                                    clothed new
              Understanding, a mirror held to you
                                  you may fancy yourself
                                  prophet or poet
                                  mystic or mother to the world
                                  and wish this seen
                                  but these, small ego longings
                                  they are
              Graveclothes
                                        nothing but graveclothes
              Rise, leave the graveclothes
                                         Seal this tomb
                                         free, walk in light
                                                    clothed new
 
The trappings of ego, social norms
                   the pressure to be doing
                   creating, producing
                   squeezed by deadening belief
                   you are only relevant
                   in doing and known to be
                                                                      doing
                                                done, I am
               Graveclothes
                                        nothing but graveclothes
               Rise, leave ego’s graveclothes
                                             seal its tomb
                                             Free, walk in light
                                                        clothed new
                                                  Enfleshed grace –
                              Don’t you yet know –
                                         you are Relevant
                                         by being Risen
                                         awake, alive
                                         enlivened, enfleshed
                                                     Grace
 
Comparisons – of your children
                    to the shiny-ness of others’
                    children, achievers, actively known
                              much praised
                    names held in golden esteem
               Graveclothes
                                        nothing but graveclothes
               (and these – graveclothes
                         your children themselves
                         are not wearing
                         because you have well taught
                         them not to put them on
                                             so why must you!)
               Graveclothes
                                       nothing but graveclothes
               Rise, leave these graveclothes
                                         seal the tomb
                                         free, walk in light clothed
                                             Awake, alive, eyes clear
                              to see light embodied in your children
                                                  as they are
                                 love them into their authentic
                                                  best selves
                              and do not offer them graveclothes, of any sort
                                                     to wear
                                  or model for them graveclothes
                          Model for them the rising
                                             and the leaving
                                             of the graveclothes
                                             the sealing of the tomb
                                             the walking free, in light
 
Comparisons, self-condemnations
                     spirit-quenching judgments
                     robbing joy and justice
                     In blindness, holding onto
                                             unlit candles
                                light of others unseen, unhonored
                                your own light unlit
                                             un-risen, un-enfleshed
               Graveclothes
                                        nothing but graveclothes
 
Rise! Leave the graveclothes
               all graveclothes
               seal the tomb
Free! Walk in light, clothed
      awake and alive
                 Risen
 
Risen, enfleshed Grace
            dry bones enlivened
                  clothed in
                        Light
 
Rise!
          Leave the graveclothes
               of this past life
                                             (death)
               of what was thought normal
                              but was
                                             death
          These graveclothes, they are
                              but tatters and they stink
                              Shake them free
                              dust, they disintegrate
                              shake the dust free
                              rise and walk
                              Return no more
                              to this death
                              Risen, return to life
 
Things that have been thought normal in this world
                       scarcity, lack, greed
                       busyness and exhaustion
                       body and soul and earth depletion
                       unkindness and heart blindness
                       violence and war
                       inequity and injustice
               Graveclothes
                                       nothing but graveclothes
                       that are and belong
                                                               to death
               Let us all rise, leave these graveclothes
                              Seal the tombs we have made
                             for one another,
                              seal them
                              return to them no more
               Free, let us walk in light clothed
                              together Risen
              

Voiceless

/ Lanae / 1 Comment Featured

Voiceless
On some things
I feel
my voice is
silence
silenced?
Silence my voice
voice my silence

Sometimes
silence
is the voice of grace
grace the voice
in silence
Is silence sometimes
the greater grace?

I’m not sure what sense this little collection of words makes, and I’m not even sure what I’m trying to say.
What I know is this: I’m feeling voiceless, and from my voiceless feeling comes the question, Is silence sometimes the greater grace? Or, when is silence the greater grace?

Why am I feeling voiceless?
Because in the matter of traumatic sexual experiences, I too have a story/stories. One I can tell, one(s) I cannot.

My first sexual experience with a woman – really, my first true sexual experience – involved deceit, manipulation, and a lack of consent. 21 and I had never been drunk before, but a couple coworkers thought being 21 should be celebrated. One of them took me to her home later. The experience itself was unsettling in its emptiness, but it was the aftermath of harassment that was truly chilling – having the two of them confront me at work “We knew you were gay, you can’t hide it,” the two of them waiting for me outside my apartment when I got off work at 3 am, or the time I came home to find the yard decorated with toilet paper and apparently stolen road signs. It felt evil.

It also left me wondering, what does a consensual, joyful, soulful sexual experience feel like? Will I ever know?
When I went into celibate ministry later, I figured I’d never know and that would be okay.

But there’s another story, too.

It’s not that I lack courage to tell this story. I do have a voice, I know my voice, and I have lifted my voice to share other parts of my story – spirituality, sexuality, identity, the journey toward becoming a whole, beloved person.
There are other parts of my whole story I have left in silence, especially aspects of distressing sexual experiences – at least online silence. Because is it always the highest good, the most right thing, to bare deeply intimate things to the light of the [online] world? Does it always help with healing? No …
Do I entirely feel the liberty to share those intimate bits of my story, which is intermingled with another’s story, and in considering reverberations it could bring into my life or my children’s life? No …
But – do I want to be heard? Yes, absolutely.
And I have been heard. Heard by friends, heard in private conversations. Heard in even the stillness of my meditations  – the Spirit has heard me. And so there has been healing.

The main reason I’m writing is for myself, to process my thoughts and feelings, to wrestle with nuances. Perhaps another reason I’m writing is to put a little light on why some stories may not get told, some voices remain silent, or why this silence is sometimes a valid choice. These things deserve voice and understanding too …

All the stories and experiences matter. All the voices matter; all our voices matter!

I do think it’s important to consider that there are many forms and contexts in which traumatizing sexual experiences can occur, and there are demoralizing, dehumanizing sexual experiences women – anyone – go through that may not necessarily arise to the level of criminality or legal reckoning. That doesn’t mean there isn’t, or shouldn’t be, a spiritual, social, or moral reckoning of some kind.

Perhaps these experiences could or should be called assault or rape; perhaps in the technical legal definition, some would be considered neither rape nor assault. But where there was not consent, or consent was coerced, what should it be called? These experiences fall into a psychologically – as well as physically and physiologically – valid experience of being raped, feeling and being deeply, humiliatingly violated and intimately disrespected. Emotionally and spiritually raped.

All the stories and experiences matter!

All the voices matter, whether they roar or whisper, or are veiled in a fierce silence of grace or a fearful, shamed silence.

And sometimes, perhaps there’s genuinely a lack of intent to have caused someone to feel sexually degraded or demoralized, or a terrible awakening and striking pain when realizing this has been the other person’s experience. Lack of intention, lack of awareness, does not absolve the need for accountability, however, in whatever form.  In my situation, something about understanding this lack of intention has absolved me from carrying the weight of blame and shame, and created space for compassion (and self-compassion) that has ultimately been so healing for me.

To return to the question, I think sometimes [public] silence can be an act of grace that preserves peace in interactions that must continue – I feel that way for myself, anyway. Yet, while it’s okay for me to be [publically] silent about this piece of my story, and valid for me to feel that this kind of silence is grace in my experience, I feel that the greater grace in general now is the breaking of the silence, the outpouring of stories, the undoing of shame.

Indeed, it is well beyond the time for silence on sexual violence and the structures that enable it to be broken, the time for things that have been hidden, cloaked in unjust shame, to be unveiled – truths should be seen and heard and known. For the sake of women and the sake of all human beings who have experienced sexual violence.

After all, does change ever happen without stories, uplifted voices, narrating it?

But yet – though it’s okay to choose privacy on pieces of my story, and let others speak who can speak freely and whom the Spirit is moving to speak –
Something in me still feels voiceless. But at least I’ve given the voiceless feeling I’ve struggled with a voice here … it helps.
It’s been sharply uncomfortable. I want to have a voice, and I want it to roar and be heard, with fierce grace and belovedness!

But it helps to remember that I’m not truly voiceless … because my voice is joined with my sisters’ voices. And their voices are rising strong, perhaps shaking and perhaps with tears, but rising strong.
My spirit is joined with their spirit, our collective spirit rising strong – Spirit rising strong through us, through many.

Together, we all rise.