Towanda's Window

Leontyne Price Interview

2012-02-07T12:47:00.003-07:00

Oh, I really love this! She is splendid.

Here Comes the Sun

2011-12-22T21:05:00.000-07:00

I have been on a little sabbatical since Dec. 1 -- time to rest and heal and get born a new way of being that allows for more breathing room, more sabbath, in my life and in particular how I embody my vocational call. It has been a good and challenging time so far, and Advent/Christmas/Epiphany is a great time to rest and await new birth.

Here are two little gems I have been gifted with along the way which I want to share with you.

Blessings to all of you.

Blessing for the Longest Night
All throughout these months
as the shadows
have lengthened,
this blessing has been
gathering itself,
making ready,
preparing for
this night.
It has practiced
walking in the dark,
traveling with
its eyes closed,
feeling its way
by memory
by touch
by the pull of the moon
even as it wanes.
So believe me
when I tell you
this blessing will
reach you
even if you
have not light enough
to read it;
it will find you
even though you cannot
see it coming.
You will know
the moment of its
arriving
by your release
of the breath
you have held
so long;
a loosening
of the clenching
in your hands,
of the clutch
around your heart;
a thinning
of the darkness
that had drawn itself
around you.
This blessing
does not mean
to take the night away
but it knows
its hidden roads,
knows the resting spots
along the path,
knows what it means
to travel
in the company
of a friend.
So when
this blessing comes,
take its hand.
Get up.
Set out on the road
you cannot see.
This is the night
when you can trust
that any direction
you go,
you will be walking
toward the dawn.

--Jan Richardson

Gaudete

2011-12-12T13:04:00.001-07:00

Oh, Gaudete, yes...

On Holiness

2011-11-30T17:45:00.001-07:00

"It is no coincidence that the root of whole, health, heal, holy is hale (as in hale and hearty). If we are healed, we become whole; we are hale and hearty; we are holy.

The marvelous thing is that holiness is nothing we can earn. We don't become holy by acquiring merit badges and Brownie points. It has nothing to do with virtue or job descriptions or morality. It is nothing we can do, in this do-it-yourself world. It is gift, sheer gift, waiting there to be recognized and received. We do not have to be qualified to be holy. We do not have to be qualified to be whole, or healed."
Madeleine L'Engle

Ah, the perfect words for my journey right now...

Ooh, That Last Line

2011-10-25T13:10:00.000-06:00

What I Have Learned So Far

Meditation is old and honorable, so why should I

not sit, every morning of my life, on the hillside,

looking into the shining world? Because, properly

attended to, delight, as well as havoc, is suggestion.

Can one be passionate about the just, the

ideal, the sublime, and the holy, and yet commit

to no labor in its cause? I don't think so.

All summations have a beginning, all effect has a

story, all kindness begins with the sown seed.

Thought buds toward radiance. The gospel of

light is the crossroads of -- indolence, or action.

Be ignited, or be gone.

~ Mary Oliver ~

Gulp

2011-10-16T21:11:00.000-06:00

Once again, Joyce DiDonato does not disappoint with photos from her current production of Der Rosenkavalier at La Scala. She posted this on Facebook and I hope it is ok that I post it here, since the last time I tried just posting the link, some of you couldn't see it. It is just too good not to share.

Her Marschallin is Anne Schwanewilms. Heretowith:

So very nice...

Friday Five: Scattered Edition

2011-10-14T14:19:00.004-06:00

The theme for this week's RevGals Friday Five is about being scattered. Sigh, that's about right for my life these days!

1. I lose my keys all of the time. Even if they are in my hand, I still am looking for them. Sigh!
What is something you chronically looking for, if anything?

I am chronically ever looking for lots of things: justice, hope, balance, my next favorite Renée Fleming youtube clip...

2. What movie are you looking forward to watching sometime in the future? (me, the new Footloose!)

Movie? Uh. I'm not even sure what's playing *now*, much less "sometime in the future." On the other hand, I do know the Live from the Met HD broadcasts start tomorrow and I am definitely looking forward to those!! I can't go tomorrow but will go the encore...I have all the broadcasts I want to see on my calendar!

3. What is one of your favorite comfort foods? (me, pizza. hands down).

pepperoni pizza

4. Story time. Tell us a story of one your favorite people that has touched, blessed your life.

As I am sitting here I am feeling deeply grateful that I have so many stories of so many people to choose from. Particularly thoughtful today for BlueEyes, who is being ordained on Sunday, thanks be to God; JT, who was at the OccupyDenver protest all night while we vigiled at home, cell phones on all night in case she or another of our peeps needed bailing out of jail (all home safe and sound); TJoy, who knows what it's like, and who accompanies me with care on this hard stretch of spiritual journey; and of course, my beloved cielo, who loves me no matter what, and fills my life with tenderness and joy. Also she cleans the gutters, because I hate climbing ladders.

5. What do you do to focus or calm or center yourself? (please, I need ideas!!!)

Breathe. Stretch. Snuggle. Hug. Hold hands. Breathe more. Helps to remind myself that whatever the moment, I have all I need, thanks to Her.

BONUS: Share the first thing (or second thing) that comes to your mind after your read this!

Uh...I really want a Coke. And a nap.

Searching

2011-10-12T20:38:00.003-06:00

I enjoy the new blogger features that let me see things like how people find this blog -- from other blogs, mostly, and google searches. It's quite interesting to me that the search that brings the most people here is for the Trail of Tears, which takes them to this post from 2008. This is consistently the most viewed page on my blog.

(The "coincidence" mentioned in that post, in case you haven't been around long, is that I was on trial that same week, for standing in solidarity with First Nations folk.)

I also love seeing all the countries from which people come to "look in the Window" as it were. This week, the top countries are the US, Sri Lanka (!), Germany, France, Japan, Brazil, Ukraine, Canada, Netherlands, and United Arab Emirates. Greetings, everyone!

All time, Window readers come from the US, United Kingdom, Germany, Canada, Netherlands, Russia, France, Brazil, Australia, and Ukraine.

Wave in the comments if you're from any of these countries! Or if you're not! And thanks for visiting!

Fall in! Fall in!

2011-10-12T14:19:00.000-06:00

Have You Ever Tried to Enter the Long Black Branches?

Have you ever tried to enter the long black branches
of other lives --
tried to imagine what the crisp fringes, full of honey,
hanging
from the branches of the young locust trees, in early morning,
feel like?

Do you think this world was only an entertainment for you?

Never to enter the sea and notice how the water divides
with perfect courtesy, to let you in!
Never to lie down on the grass, as though you were the grass!
Never to leap to the air as you open your wings over
the dark acorn of your heart!

No wonder we hear, in your mournful voice, the complaint
that something is missing from your life!


Who can open the door who does not reach for the latch?
Who can travel the miles who does not put one foot
in front of the other, all attentive to what presents itself
continually?
Who will behold the inner chamber who has not observed
with admiration, even with rapture, the outer stone?


Well, there is time left --
fields everywhere invite you into them.

And who will care, who will chide you if you wander away
from wherever you are, to look for your soul?

Quickly, then, get up, put on your coat, leave your desk!


To put one's foot into the door of the grass, which is
the mystery, which is death as well as life, and
not be afraid!

To set one's foot in the door of death, and be overcome
with amazement!

To sit down in front of the weeds, and imagine
god the ten-fingered, sailing out of his house of straw,
nodding this way and that way, to the flowers of the
present hour,
to the song falling out of the mockingbird's pink mouth,
to the tippets of the honeysuckle, that have opened

in the night

To sit down, like a weed among weeds, and rustle in the wind!


Listen, are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?

While the soul, after all, is only a window,

and the opening of the window no more difficult
than the wakening from a little sleep.


Only last week I went out among the thorns and said
to the wild roses:
deny me not,
but suffer my devotion.
Then, all afternoon, I sat among them. Maybe

I even heard a curl or tow of music, damp and rouge red,
hurrying from their stubby buds, from their delicate watery bodies.

For how long will you continue to listen to those dark shouters,
caution and prudence?
Fall in! Fall in!


A woman standing in the weeds.
A small boat flounders in the deep waves, and what's coming next
is coming with its own heave and grace.



Meanwhile, once in a while, I have chanced, among the quick things,
upon the immutable.
What more could one ask?

And I would touch the faces of the daises,
and I would bow down
to think about it.

That was then, which hasn't ended yet.

Now the sun begins to swing down. Under the peach-light,
I cross the fields and the dunes, I follow the ocean's edge.

I climb, I backtrack.
I float.
I ramble my way home.

~ Mary Oliver ~

Yet More Poetry

2011-09-29T12:00:00.003-06:00

May Sarton, this time. Dissolved and shaken, yes indeed...

Now I Become Myself

Now I become myself. It’s taken
Time, many years and places;
I have been dissolved and shaken,
Worn other people’s faces,
Run madly, as if Time were there,
Terribly old, crying a warning,
‘Hurry, you will be dead before —’
(What? Before you reach the morning?
Or the end of the poem is clear?
Or love safe in the walled city?)
Now to stand still, to be here,
Feel my own weight and density!
The black shadow on the paper
Is my hand; the shadow of a word
As thought shapes the shaper
Falls heavy on the page, is heard.
All fuses now, falls into place
From wish to action, word to silence,
My work, my love, my time, my face
Gathered into one intense
Gesture of growing like a plant.
As slowly as the ripening fruit
Fertile, detached, and always spent,
Falls but does not exhaust the root,
So all the poem is, can give,
Grows in me to become the song,
Made so and rooted by love.
Now there is time and Time is young.
O, in this single hour I love
All of myself and do not move.
I, the pursued, who madly ran,
Stand still, stand still, and stop the sun!

May Sarton

More Mary Oliver

2011-09-28T09:02:00.003-06:00

The Journey

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting their bad advice —
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do —
determined to save
the only life you could save.
From Mary Oliver, Dream Work

Drawn By Love

2011-09-23T09:56:00.006-06:00

Drawn by love, rather than driven by power. That is what I hope for.

With contemplation we change sides from the inside—from the power position to the position of vulnerability and solidarity, which gradually changes everything. Because now we are allowing ourselves to change and grow!
Once we are freed from our paranoia, from the narcissism that thinks we are the center of the world, or from our belief that thinks our rights and dignity have to be defended before other people’s rights and dignity, only then can we finally live and act with any justice or truth. Once these blockages are taken away from us—and that is what contemplative prayer does—then we just have to be offered a few guiding statements on social justice or other thorny issues—and we tend to get it for ourselves. We start being drawn by love instead of being driven by power.
Fr. Richard Rohr

Of Love

2011-09-21T10:11:00.003-06:00

Of Love

I have been in love more times than one,
thank the Lord. Sometimes it was lasting
whether active or not. Sometimes
it was all but ephemeral, maybe only
an afternoon, but not less real for that.
They stay in my mind, these beautiful people,
or anyway beautiful people to me, of which
there are so many. You, and you, and you,
whom I had the fortune to meet, or maybe
missed. Love, love, love, it was the
core of my life, from which, of course, comes
the word for the heart. And, oh, have I mentioned
that some of them were men and some were women
and some — now carry my revelation with you —
were trees. Or places. Or music flying above
the names of their makers. Or clouds, or the sun
which was the first, and the best, the most
loyal for certain, who looked so faithfully into
my eyes, every morning. So I imagine
such love of the world — its fervency, its shining, its
innocence and hunger to give of itself — I imagine
this is how it began.

Mary Oliver
From New and Selected Poems, 1992, Beacon Press, Boston, MA

East Coker, III

2011-09-20T19:10:00.002-06:00

I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.
Whisper of running streams, and winter lightning.
The wild thyme unseen and the wild strawberry,
The laughter in the garden, echoed ecstasy
Not lost, but requiring, pointing to the agony
Of death and birth.

You say I am repeating
Something I have said before. I shall say it again.
Shall I say it again? In order to arrive there,
To arrive where you are, to get from where you are not,
You must go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy.
In order to arrive at what you do not know
You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance.
In order to possess what you do not possess
You must go by the way of dispossession.
In order to arrive at what you are not
You must go through the way in which you are not.
And what you do not know is the only thing you know
And what you own is what you do not own
And where you are is where you are not.

T. S. Eliot, "Four Quartets."

Friday Five: September

2011-09-02T13:39:00.002-06:00

The RevGals offer this Friday Five today:

One thing I've learned with blogging and social media is that the where I live is not necessarily where you live. And so I want to know what September means to you, in your place of the world and time in your life.
This week's Friday Five is:
What are 5 things that the beginning of September mean to you?
Bonus: What's one thing you could do without?

So here goes.

1. A break in the heat. Already this week has cooled off just a touch, enough that our stay-at-home vacation this week has been quite pleasant, in terms of just hanging out at home. We don't have AC in the house or car which makes stretches of hot days very difficult. The sun angle is starting to shift now, and the temp dropping just enough, that comfort is returning. Thank goodness we figured out how to cool down the bedroom to a comfortable temp so that we can sleep. We did not have that in our old place.

2. New possibilities forming for my ministry setting. As my faith community grows in depth and commitment we look ahead to new opportunities for community building and solidarity. In addition, our association, the local regional expression of the UCC, is launching a fund to help support "covenant communities" like ours which don't fit "traditional" categories. That financial support would mean a great deal to our faith community and my vocation, especially if it means I could do my ministry work full-time rather than split between that and another job.

3. Opera is coming soon. The first HD broadcast is not until October but we're getting closer! Fleming, DiDonato, Netrebko, Voigt...what's not to like?

4. Integration. This summer has been a time of major spiritual wrestling...being wrestled out of old paths and ways into something new which I do not know what that is yet. Will autumn be a time of harvest? I go back to Mahler's Resurrection Symphony, which I posted about here.

O Pain, You piercer of all things,

From you, I have been wrestled!

O Death, You masterer of all things,

Now, are you conquered!

With wings which I have won for myself,

In love’s fierce striving,

I shall soar upwards

To the light which no eye has penetrated!

Its wing that I won is expanded,

and I fly up.

Die shall I in order to live.

Rise again, yes, rise again,

Will you, my heart, in an instant!

That for which you suffered,

To God will it lead you!

5. The work continues. I have sure enjoyed this week (8.5 days!) off. I have got to figure out how to incorporate more rest like this into my/our schedule...there is good stuff coming up, AND if I let myself get this exhausted again, well that won't be so good.

And one thing I could do without:

Hmm. I've been sitting here thinking about it and can't come up with anything other than over-scheduling myself per #5 above...So I'll go with that!

More Findings

2011-08-31T16:52:00.000-06:00

White-Shirt compatriots will be interested to know that my 1986 Christmas list prominently features one Dame Kiri Te Kanawa.

I was 16 at the time...

Oh! Also 1987!

Findings

2011-08-31T16:32:00.001-06:00

We're on vacation this week (thank you God) and taking it easy. One of the things we're doing is going through those last few boxes that never got unpacked, and now I am going through an old milk crate full of college papers, mostly very bad poetry, and things my mother saved from my youth (including music festival comment sheets, report cards, letters to Santa, and ALL my baby teeth, EWW says my cielo).

Here's one thing I ran across. Probably this is something my parents had us all do before we moved from my "hometown" where I was born and lived until I was 9, when we moved to Austin, TX for Daddy to got to seminary. The heading and numbers are in my mother's hand.

Things I Like Best To Do in Monticello:
1. Ride my bike.
2. Go to school.
3. Play with my friends.
4. Play in the ditch. (this is the creek that ran alongside our house.)
5. Visiting my older friends. (these are the elders whose love has held me in good stead life-long)
6. Playing with Punkinseed. (our cat)
7. Playing baseball.
8. Getting dirty.
9. Playing school.
10. Going fishing.

Does this list surprise anyone? I didn't think so! I love it! And...it would still be pretty similar today...just add music, which I wasn't quite in love with yet although it was certainly very much part of my life, and I'd be set!

UPDATED! A few pages later I found this (written on a typewriter!):

Dear Mommy and Daddy,
I love you very much. And I think you are the very best Mommy and Daddy there could ever be.

Do you really think I will find some new friends when we move?

(here the writer discovers the tab key...and uses it with glee...tabs deleted here for ease of reading!)
Did you know that I have some good things about moving?
1. It will be a new experience.
2. I will hopefully find new friends.
3. I will go to a new school.

I have some bad reasons, too.
1. I will miss my friends.
2. I will miss our house.
3. I will miss going down in the ditch.

Your loving dauter, (hey, I was only 9...)
[Towanda]

3/16/79

I really did love that ditch.

Aufersteh'n

2011-08-05T14:29:00.000-06:00

Thanks to Eyes for the heads-up, I've been listening to the Mahler 2nd Symphony live from the BBC Proms, Gustavo Dudamel conducting the Simon Bolivar Symphony Orchestra. I think you are able to listen again, at least for a few days, if you go to the website.

Splendidly done. I've sung in the chorus for this piece and cannot hear the last movement without crying. Especially these days.

Here is Leonard Bernstein conducting the final section of last movement. Part 1:

and Part 2:

(both clips from tokkemon, thank you!)

Here is the text, with my favorite bits in bold:

Rise again, yes, rise again,

Will you My dust,

After a brief rest!

Immortal life! Immortal life

Will He who called you, give you.

To bloom again were you sown!

The Lord of the harvest goes

And gathers in, like sheaves,

Us together, who died.

O believe, my heart, O believe:

Nothing to you is lost!

Yours is, yes yours, is what you desired

Yours, what you have loved

What you have fought for!

O believe,

You were not born for nothing!

Have not for nothing, lived, suffered!

What was created

Must perish,

What perished, rise again!

Cease from trembling!

Prepare yourself to live!

O Pain, You piercer of all things,

From you, I have been wrested!

O Death, You masterer of all things,

Now, are you conquered!

With wings which I have won for myself,

In love’s fierce striving,

I shall soar upwards

To the light which no eye has penetrated!

Its wing that I won is expanded,

and I fly up.

Die shall I in order to live.

Rise again, yes, rise again,

Will you, my heart, in an instant!

That for which you suffered,

To God will it lead you!

Enough (I hope...)

2011-08-05T08:52:00.002-06:00

Enough.
These few words are enough.
If not these words, this breath.
If not this breath, this sitting here.

This opening to the life
we have refused
again and again
until now.
Until now

~ David Whyte, Where Many Rivers Meet

I Heart Opera

2011-07-26T13:13:00.001-06:00

Click here for a lovely rehearsal photo of Joyce DiDonato and Alice Coote, from the recent ROH production of Cendrillon. You shouldn't need a Facebook account, I think, to see it (and others).

Coming Home To Me

2011-07-25T10:18:00.000-06:00

This song is a comfort to me, when the internal, spiritual stripping-away work of transformation I am doing feels so hard. Patty is the voice of God here for me...

I hear the "coming home" part not so much as like, coming home to Her after death (although, that too), but in every moment, in the ordinariness of the daily, if I can just remember, I can lean my head back, and remember I am home...

Anytime you say it with heart
Anytime you're falling apart
When you're washing the sheets
Any stranger you meet
When there's somebody waving goodbye

You're coming home to me, just remember
You're coming home to me

It's a world full of bar rooms and alleys
Of blue nights and red river valleys
When you feel like a shirt and a tie
Or like dirt
Or a lion and no one can see

You're coming home to me, just remember
You're coming home to me

When you get to that place
That's just under the stars
Hanging over the tree
at a quarter to three
When you get there you'll know
That's as far as you go
When you get there you'll see
You were already free
When you get there you'll la la la la la la

When you're lost and you're found
And you're found and you're lost
When you're dancing with no one around

You're coming home to me, just remember
You're coming home to me

My Hair

2011-07-24T18:20:00.001-06:00

So when I was a teenager, I really didn't know what to do with my hair.

My hair is straight, and fine, and sometimes it was long and sometimes it was short and mostly, when I was a young teenager (think, like 12-15), it wasn't very hip and cool or even, in my opinion, very attractive. Up until I was 15, my mom cut it, so, you know. Not really her fault, I just didn't know what to do.

When I was turned 15, my friend and I decided we would get perms. (I know, right?). Do something different, I thought...everyone, it seemed like, had lovely wavy hair, maybe I could be just like them. Maybe then they would like me. Maybe then I would feel like I fit in.

Except...I had no idea what to do with it once it was permed. So it was just, kind of, there, and it grew out, and even I will tell you that it was not a good look.

Not long before I turned 16, I remember I was in Spanish class. And I watched as across the room, 2-3 of the popular girls made fun of my hair. They didn't think I could see or hear them. But I did.

It hurt. Adolescence sucks, can we just all agree on that?

For my 16th birthday, my parents took me (just me, not my brothers!) to Kansas City to celebrate (we lived in Kansas at the time). They wanted to take me to the rotating restaurant on top of the Hyatt (I could order whatever I wanted) and shopping for new clothes (I could get whatever I wanted) and everything else, whatever I wanted. I remember going to the Nelson-Atkins Art Museum (in part for the lunch in the courtyard because I loved their cream of mushroom soup) and seeing "Out of Africa" (and developing a huge crush on Meryl Streep, sigh...).

So then my folks took me shopping. After we were done we were walking through the mall and I saw a haircutting place. I stopped short.

"I want to get my hair cut." I said. So, in we went, and I talked to my stylist, a very nice man, and for my 16th birthday I got my hair cut in a short style that was up to date and flattering. I liked it. I knew how to replicate it. And pretty much, since that time, I have had the same hair cut...part on the left, layered back over the top and right...though getting shorter and spikier through the years. A college friend found me on Facebook and declared, "You still have the same hair!"

Here is me, May 2010, so you can see what my hair has been like the last 10 years or so, in its "shorter and spikier" stage.

At the goat farm!

Then in February, I went in to get my hair cut, and the stylist said, "You know...you could have a little fun with this. You could totally do a faux hawk, and..." (she messed with my hair a little), "it seems like your hair wants to go that way today."

I gulped. I mean the thing with my hair is, mostly, I want it to look acceptable, decent and orderly, and not draw attention (see above, re: mean girls when I was 15). But then I thought, what the hell? I mean, if I didn't like it I could always go back to the old way, right? So, dear reader, we styled it in a faux hawk.

And I liked it. A couple of days later I went up to Arvada for my chiropractor appointment, and decided to style it that way again. I was early, so I hung out in a Starbucks for a while, and watched as the very normative decent and orderly white folk stared at me. And I didn't mind (which was kind of a shock).

So I thought about that for a while. On retreat in April, I played with my hair a little and liked the look more. Here's a photo I took of myself in my hermitage:

Me, the sun, a faux hawk, and the San Luis Valley.

But I wasn't quite ready...my cielo's ordination was coming up and I didn't want to debut a new style before that in case I decided I didn't like it (or she didn't!).

Then, a few days before her ordination in May, I got my haircut, and it was AWFUL. Dude just did a bad job. I was ticked, and decided it was a sign: Time for a change!

So in June, my friend H came over and cut my hair. She is brilliant at many things (theology, for one thing), and one of those things is cutting hair. We talked about what I wanted and she did a great job. And I LOVED it. It took me a week or so to figure out the trick to styling it (and for my hair to realize we were doing A NEW THING) but once I got it, there was no turning back. She has come back again and trimmed it up and I am just loving it. Here I am:

Me, at the July 4th vigil at the immigrant detention center.

Now, this may not seem like a big deal to you. It may not even seem like that drastic of a change...but trust me. For me, this is a Big. Deal. It's a big deal to do exactly what I want, and not really care what other people think. It's a big deal to have it not be exactly the same each time, or for it to look a little messy and imperfect, and not really care what other people think. It's a big deal, to let just a little, visible part of me be a little bit...indecent (in the sense of "not decent" in the sense of "not acceptable" in the sense of "not normative" for a nice Christian woman pastor) and a little bit...disorderly.

Which precisely mirrors my spiritual journey at the moment, of letting go of what is "decent and in good order" (quoth St. Paul and turned into paralysis-by-perfectionism in presbyterianism, my former denomination). Being Decent and Orderly (which yes, there is a time and place for) has become choking to me, stifling, and God, She has been battering my heart asking me to let. it. go...let. myself. go. (Into Her embrace, wholly and completely...)

At last.

So you see. The faux hawk...symbolic of the inner journey of liberation I am on...

A Blessing

2011-07-23T19:06:00.000-06:00

I did a wedding today for two fine justice workers in our community. A simple affair, bringing a Latina woman's family and an African-American man's family together (married by a queer white woman...now THAT is the beloved community!).

The groom's aunt, Mrs. M., is 82 years old. Last night at the rehearsal dinner (barbecue in the couple's backyard, perfect), the bride introduced me and my cielo as "fellow travelers" in the immigration justice movement. Soon, Mrs. M. was thanking my cielo and I for our work and inviting us to her Louisville, KY home any time we wanted to come visit. She said we must have good hearts to do the work that we do.

Well, that would have been enough of a blessing, to have my vocation affirmed by an African-American elder. Then today, when we were passing the peace at the end of the wedding, Mrs. M. grabbed hold of my elbows and just would not let go. She was shaking a little. You are a blessing, she said to me, a blessing, you blessed me today...You have something special, such a blessing...

Well, I don't really know what to say to that except thank you, so I just let her hold me and bless me and say I am just trying to be who God asks me to be.

Moments like these, these are how I know I am on the right path, God's path of love and justice, and that I am dealing honestly with my privilege, and being a good ally to other oppressed and marginalized communities.

I give thanks for Mrs. M., and pray her a safe journey home.

Isaiah 40:28-31

2011-07-21T21:05:00.000-06:00

I'm doing a wedding on Saturday for some fine radical folk, and this is the scripture text they chose. They will read the NRSV with traditional language, but I am moved, for my own sake-journey, to change it up a little for you here.

Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Divine One is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. She does not faint or grow weary of loving you. Her understanding is unsearchable (which means She knows more than you do...so trust Her...). She gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless. En la lucha, personal and communal, to walk God's path of love and justice, even young folk will faint and be weary, will fall exhausted; but those who wait for Her shall renew their strength, they shall rise up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.

My Current Favorite Song

2011-07-16T19:39:00.000-06:00

Pendulum Swinger, Indigo Girls

SHE IS SHE IS SHE IS

i meet you for coffee
we get together periodically and
i got a bad case i can't shake off of me
the fevered wandering round wondering how it ought to be
you work in the system
you see possibilities and your glistening
eyes show the hell you're gonna give 'em
when they back off the mic for once and give it to a woman
i dream like a mad one
brutal fantasies i catch as catch can
i'm a psychic and a laywoman
(i see love)
i see love and i like to make it happen
what we get from your war walk
the ticker of the nation breaking down like a bad clock
i want the pendulum to swing again
so that all your mighty mandate was just spitting in the wind
it doesn't come by the bullwhip
(it's not persuaded)
it's not persuaded with your hands on your hips
(it's not the company)
it's not the company of gunslingers
the epicenter love is the pendulum swinger
(love)
(it's the pendulum swinger)
she is
(she is)
she is
(she is)
it's fine about the old scroll sanskrit
gnostic gospels the da vinci code a smash hit
aren't we dying just to read it and relate it's
too hard just to go by a blind faith
but they left out the sisters
i've been praying to a father god so long i really missed her
the goddess of benevolence
and you should listen to your mama if you have a lick of sense left
it doesn't come by the bullwhip
(it's not persuaded)
it's not persuaded with your hands on your hips
(it's not the company)
it's not the company of gunslingers
the epicenter love is the pendulum swinger
(love)
(it's the pendulum swinger)
she is
(she is)
she is
(she is)
she is
(she is)
she is
(she is)
pushed under by the main press
(can't keep her down)
buried under a code of dress
(she wants to get up again)
relegated by the vatican
(can't keep her down)
but you can't keep her spirit down it wants to get up again
(she wants to get up again)
if we're a drop in the bucket
with just enough science to keep from saying fuck it
until the last drop of sun burns its sweet light
plenty revolutions left until we get this thing right
it doesn't come by the bullwhip
(it's not persuaded)
it's not persuaded with your hands on your hips
(it's not the company)
it's not the company of gunslingers
the epicenter love is the pendulum swinger
(love)
(it's the pendulum swinger)
she is
(she is)
she is
(she is)
she is
(she is)
she is
(she is)

words and music by emily saliers

Towanda's Traditional 4th of July Post

2011-07-04T00:13:00.002-06:00

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed--
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There's never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")
Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek--
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one's own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean--
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today--O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That's made America the land it has become.
O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home--
For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,
And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa's strand I came
To build a "homeland of the free."

The free?

Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we've dreamed
And all the songs we've sung
And all the hopes we've held
And all the flags we've hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay--
Except the dream that's almost dead today.

O, let America be America again--
The land that never has been yet--
And yet must be--the land where every man is free.
The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME--
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose--
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath--
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain--
All, all the stretch of these great green states--
And make America again!

—Langston Hughes

Beauty For A Rainy Thursday

2011-06-30T16:14:00.000-06:00

Complaint

2011-06-13T12:12:00.000-06:00

Dear God.

You have my attention. MUST you continue waking me multiple times in the night with the command to pray?

I'm happy to pray for my people, my cielo, even (gulp) myself, but...

...seriously. I am exhausted, and I ache.

Love,
Towanda

Read This

2011-06-06T13:17:00.000-06:00

via People of Color Organize.

“When Columbus got off the boat, he asked us who we were. We said we’re the Human Beings, we’re the People. Conceptually the Europeans didn’t understand that, it was beyond their conceptual reality. They didn’t see us. They couldn’t see who we were. Historically speaking, we went from being Indians to pagans to savages to hostiles to militants to activists to Native Americans. It’s five hundred years later and they still can’t see us. we are still invisible. They don’t see us as human beings, but we’ve been saying to them all along that’s what we are. We are invisible to them because we are still the Human Beings, we’re still the People, but they will never call us that. They taught us to call ourselves Indians, now they’re teaching us to call ourselves Native Americans. It’s not who we are. We’re the People. They can’t see us as human beings. But they can’t see themselves as human beings. The invisibility is at every level, it’s not just that we’re tucked away out of sight. We’re the evidence of the crime. They can’t deal with the reality of who we are because then they have to deal with the reality of what they have done. If they deal with the reality of who we are, they have to deal with the reality of who they aren’t. So they have to fear us, not recognize us, not like us. The very fact of calling us Indians creates a new identity for us, an identity that began with their arrival. Changing identity, creating a new perceptual reality, is another form of genocide. It’s like severing a spiritual umbilical cord that reaches into the ancestral past. The history of the Indians begins with the arrival of the Europeans. The history of the People begins with the beginning of the history of the People. The history of the People is one of cooperation, collectivity, and living in balance. The history of the Indians is one of being attacked and genocide, rather than a history of peace and balance. The history of the People under attack, the Indians, in an evolutionary context, is not very long, it’s only five hundred years. The objective of civilizing us is to make Indian history become our permanent reality. The necessary objective of Native people is to outlast this attack, however long it takes, to keep our identity alive.”

- John Trudell (Santee Sioux)

Scenes from a Retreat

2011-05-29T19:59:00.000-06:00

kneel.
stretch.
breathe.
cry.
repeat.
the fire
releases
the tears
the wood
keeps held
inside
herself.
kneel.
stretch.
breathe.
cry.
repeat.
the tears
are the only way
she knows
god
is still
here.

Dead tree and sky, on the path to my hermitage.

The tears she holds inside herself.

Dusk outside my west window.

Playful feet, warm sand.

Sunday morning snowstorm.


Thirsty, playful mule deer.

Last evening sunset.

Hey!

2011-05-21T15:14:00.002-06:00

I'm still here. Just super busy since getting back from my retreat. Hope all of you are well!

More later,
Love, Towanda

See Y'all In A Week

2011-04-27T15:35:00.001-06:00

Off tomorrow for my annual post-Easter retreat here. Hoping to return refreshed, and energized for the work ahead. Y'all be good (but not too good) while I'm gone!

(Tess...don't you think "good" might be just as tedious as "nice?")

Good Friday Meditation

2011-04-22T14:31:00.001-06:00

I have posted this song, "Marietta's Lied," before, (appropriately, in a post about pain), but for some reason I am drawn to it today, Good Friday, when we remember the violent execution of our brother Jesus by the Roman Empire. He was accused of "agitating the nation" (Luke 23:2), of fomenting a revolution of fierce love and utter faithfulness to God's way rather than the way of Empire. And he was killed for it. And for today, that is the end of the story.

In John's telling of it (John 12), a few days before he is arrested he has a meal with his community. His friend Mary of Bethany anoints his feet, and there is something about that act which makes me think of this song. Here's the text:

Joy, that near to me remains,
Come to me, my true love.
Night sinks into the grove
You are my light and day.
Anxiously beats heart on heart
Hope itself soars heavenward.
How true, a sad song.
The song of true love,
that must die.

I know this song.
I often heard it sung
in happier days of yore.
There is yet another stanza -
have I still got it in mind?

Though dismal sorrow is drawing nigh,
move up close beside me, my true love.
Turn your wan face to me
death will not part us.
When the hour of death comes one day,
believe that you will rise again.

Here's a sermon I preached on Mary's anointing Jesus a few years ago. I think you can see the similarities.

I am moved by the acts of tenderness and love his community shows Jesus as he confronts the Empire, with such great risk. I think he could not have done it without them.

Blessed Good Friday to you.

Tickets Printed!

2011-04-20T20:48:00.000-06:00

2008 Opening Night Gala:

2011 Production:

Yup, pretty sure I will be in heaven on Saturday.

Happy Birthday to Me!

2011-04-18T11:54:00.000-06:00

Today is my birthday! And a very kind and thoughtful reader sent me this in celebration:

Great present, no?

(for those who don't know, that is Vesselina Kasarova and Anja Harteros enjoying a moment in Handel's Alcina, from a production in Munich a few years back. Anik has a few details.)

Spring Ball

2011-04-07T13:39:00.000-06:00

It's been a while since I've posted about the greatest sport ever invented, but I thought I might point out how many teams have a better record than the damnyankees after a week of ball:

Baltimore (!)
Toronto
Cleveland (!)
Kansas City (!!)
Texas
Philly
Cincinnati
Pittsburgh (!!)
Colorado

I imagine Boston fans' heads are exploding after getting swept by Texas AND Cleveland (!!) to start the season 0-6. Now they finally get to go home, only to start a weekend series with the damnyankees. Things have got to turn around for them, and wouldn't it be sweet if the turnaround starts against the Evil Empire?

Go baseball!