Everyday I spend with women in shelter I am awestruck by how much courage there is to be gathered in the face of violence, whether it is sexual, physical, or verbal. It is a very fragile moment, when I look a woman in the eye and ask her if she has been sexually assaulted. I want to be as present as I can possibly be in that moment.  And while the sense of powerlessness and betrayal quivers in her voice, I wait for her to speak.  

In New York, a new organization has opened a shelter specifically to serve foreign born victims of sex-trafficking.  One shelter in the entire city, in the entire region for that matter. Whether through literal prostitution or pornography production, the buying and selling of sex requires bodies to be viewed as commodities.  And the trauma and dehumanization is not less than profound in the midst of a massive demand and a violent silence. I am speaking most angrily about children and minors here, though I would argue that many if not most adults selling their bodies do not understand what a choice is. We live during a time when isolated bedrooms are being used as viral colosseums, where gladiators are young girls and boys,  and the tickets holders will let you watch from your own private room. Everyday young women are told they have no where else to go, that no one will believe them.  Let us learn how to recognize the signs, the invisible lives that are right before us. There are millions of slaves passing through our borders, and their oppressors walk freely on our soil. It is a problem that goes beyond a few horrifying stories, it is systematic, epidemic, and it is time to educate ourselves on what can be done. 

 RestoreNYC
love146
worldhope

faast

The time has come, the walrus said, to talk of many things.
~Lewis Carroll

Recently I took a stroll through the woods on Anastasia Island,

it is often said there are no seasons in Florida

but I beg to differ,
the trees here are as lively and as changing
as any I have seen
while there are more thumps and scurries

and rustling noises between the leaves.

On this walk as the sun began to fade and

I reluctantly left the woods, 

you will see what happened in the sky.
And I am home here, even if not entirely sure why.

From a Season of Doubt

It was late August.
I wasn't thinking of
how a flock of birds
flying west

might search for a canopy
on a yellow, treeless plain
or how their wings might
tip and sway as the granite
patriarchs began to
rise into the sky

Not even
could I imagine
their solace, the trembling
laughter of applause
tingling through the
evergreen trees

when they finally reached
their boughs in the place
I could no longer weep.

It was the birds who knew
how to travel and soar
and equally how to
 nest and stay
how to let the sun touch
down on their warm and
weary wings

And even though
I did not hear them sing
 there were birds everywhere

The Anguished Seriousness of Advent, Thomas Merton

Three years ago this week I drove around a roundabout on Main Street in Concord Massachusetts where I taught preschool, snowbanks full, candles glowing through dark windows, a wooden Nativity scene.  Concord is an intellectual town not particularly concerned with religiosity other than for the sake of tradition, and so the sight of Christian celebration was very striking. But I reacted with an involuntary cringe that was evidence of my ambivalence for religious yearning at the time, at least within the walls of a church.

Today I had planned to begin a new blog tradition, "Mary Oliver Monday."  I went to the store to buy a book for my nephew, whom I will miss so much this Christmas while staying in Florida. I came home with a few bags of materials for gift making, did some laundry, and spent the evening decorating ornaments with the ladies of the church I am now attending. Throughout the day, a growing sense of emptiness began to knot into a sorrow which did not allow me to concentrate on anything I tried to do. The dark silhouettes outlining the evergreen trees in Washington had been present in my mind all day, as though I would be going home.  And every year I am stricken by the darkness that hits so early in the afternoon this time of year, even if I grew up with it. Just an hour under the fluorescent overload of commercialized Christmas today was enough to drive me back to the same hunger I have so often felt since that anguished New England season, a slow hope bringing me home. Thomas Merton may have been on to something when he said that "advertising treats all products with the reverence and the seriousness due to sacraments." More than any other writer I know he talks about finding hope in Christ in deep darkness. And so, for Monday, here is Thomas Merton on Advent:

"It is important to remember the deep, in some ways anguished seriousness of Advent, when the mendacious celebrations of our marketing culture so easily harmonize with our tendency to regard Christmas, consciously or otherwise, as a return to our own innocence and our own infancy. Advent should remind us that the “King Who is to Come” is more than a charming infant smiling (or if you prefer a dolorous spirituality, weeping) in the straw. There is certainly nothing wrong with the traditional family joys of Christmas, nor need we be ashamed to find ourselves still able to anticipate them without too much ambivalence. After all, that in itself is no mean feat.

But the Church in preparing us for the birth of a “great prophet,” a Savior and a King of Peace, has more in mind than seasonal cheer. The Advent mystery focuses the light of faith upon the very meaning of life, of history, of man, of the world and of our own being. In Advent we celebrate the coming and indeed the presence of Christ in our world. We witness to His presence even in the midst of all its inscrutable problems and tragedies. Our Advent faith is not an escape from the world to a misty realm of slogans and comforts which declare our problems to be unreal, our tragedies inexistent."

beach song

To discover a poet

ON THE PIER
by Brenda Hillman

I'd like to walk out on ignorance like this,

long and brown like the ignorance of myself,

see water shimmer and jump,

see the birds find something they could accept.

I would be voicelessly condemned, a bad

sailor walking the plank, hearing the boards

cry out like the boards of an old desk,

slightly gaping, wet with a collection of mornings.

And the end of the pier, at the end of this ignorance,

I'd celebrate, The sea, like many wine glasses

tipped, "Here's to you--you know nothing at all!"

And birds crashing--white gloves, in applause!

Lately I have been hearing the long stretched out call of unclaimed experience; to act, to be a little bit braver, to be a lot braver.  There is so much fear in art. The water is so cold, that first dip, the feeling that rushes into the clammy solace you find in hiding.  Where if you stay, you might be okay, you might see a little sunlight darting onto the wall from the shimmering water where you ought to be, you might just smile at the view with the consolation of tomorrow. And an amount of time will pass, an hour or a year or even many years,  when the poet in you, the lover in you must suddenly rise and do what it needs to do, to come alive and to create, to love the way you are meant to love.

I could be content reading Mary Oliver poems for the rest of my life, but even she would say that one who would write poetry, must also read poetry, and a lot of it. This morning I discovered the poet Brenda Hillman on everyskinnytree, a blog whose author is a poet herself, and a lover of children. The post included her poem A Dwelling, which speaks so pointedly to the poet, to that place of trembling.

on bonding with tools

My earliest memory of working with tools was going into my Grandpa's workspace when I was a little girl and playing with several of his vice grips.  I just loved putting a scrap of wood between the metal teeth and turning the handle until the wood was held tight, always amazed that the wood would not drop!  My brother and I must have looked like some kind of elves, picking up tools we had no idea what to do with and pretending we were master artisans, even if we were just hammering two blocks of wood together. Something about that space filled me with so much awe, it was part of a strange and wonderful new world we had found ourselves in that I only recall at the time as being warm. I knew so little of the violence that my mother had escaped to bring us there, how brave she had been, what shelter she had found for us all. Lately I have been missing my Grandpa so much, his suspenders, his working boots, the thousands of memories I have of him working with his hands, whether he was building a barn or a fence or crafting a wooden marble maze. This here tire swing is the result of a typical rainy afternoon. He never made us go away when we hovered nearby with so many questions, but would give us something to do. And in the house which he built he incorporated features which I am convinced were purely for children, like a laundry shoot from the upstairs bathroom, perfect for throwing down strips of toilet paper, and the opening in the wall right by the doorway where Grandpa would place firewood,  which opened on the other side into the living room right next to the fire. Of course it was really meant to be a spy hole.  My favorite hiding space was a rounded curve between two stairwells, where I would lean as I parked my keester on the cold granite rock floor, and poke the legs of my Uncle who would readily oblige with horrible shock. My grandmother I'm sure either laughed or rolled her eyes when she found who knows how many mysterious pieces of TP in the laundry basket down in the basement, but she never scolded us. These days my Grandpa's health does not allow him to spend as much time being as "active" as he likes to call it, though one day lying on the couch is about as much torture as he allows himself to handle.  As for me, I would just like to gather my own set of tools without heading down some dreaded and impersonal mass production aisle.  This here video featuring the Liberty Tool store in Maine gives me some motivation.  Mr. "Skip" Brack is the kind of proprietor I wish I could meet, so far away from my Grandpa's advice.


There's No Place Like Here: Liberty Tool from Etsy on Vimeo.

words are poor things

lonely these days for 

old landscapes

wet windowpanes

leaves soaked by rain

reaching for a place

where hollows of loss

and seared damage

can grow into

new space

so full of grace

here
where every 
morning the

sun brushes 
my face

this song Thao & Mirah - Hallelujah

this book Housekeeping