Author Archives: Elea Lee

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About Elea Lee

Foster parent, adopting parent, family advocate, educator, homeschool parent

A free speech issue

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A woman on a plane objects to forced proximity to pornography and is told she has no support.  She must endure another person’s objectional material.  Which is, btw, degrading and offensive to women.

No one comes to her aid, and the NYTimes walks on egg shells when they report it.

A respectable American businessman who practices fair, nondiscriminatory hiring and follows his conscience in his business is vilified because he has the temerity to exercise his first amendment right to say he supports a traditional view of marriage.

Guy has a right to talk

But…

The truth is that one of the major reasons the marriage argument is huge and important is that millions of Americans live in fear because of hate.  Hate kills, maims, tortures, intimidates, and dehumanizes people.  Just because of their sexual identity.

No person in this country should have to hide who they are because they are afraid of violence.

No person should be the target of violence because they are gay or transgendered.

We have to start with that.

We have to build from the ground up.

Love requires it.

I broke my own rule

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One time in the same week I wrote a letter to someone and a poem to someone else.  Both someones had behaved badly.  My intrepid partner (always the English major) told me he liked the poem more than the letter.

Of course, I thought. Poetry is the marble colonade you hide in when followed by ghosts or splendor.  A letter is an everyday thing.  Too blunt to be art.  But is any of this about Art?

No.  Not really.  It is about sanctuary and splendor.  Borrowed safety and borrowed beauty.

And attempting however obliquely to suggest the existence of Absolute Love.

So I violated my own rule about my other blog– called etiology.  I told myself I would keep etiology free of my obsession with grief and injustice and the anger that follows these things.

I once wrote a poem I cannot see myself publishing.  Too painful, too personal.  I once wrote a letter to C’s prison therapist which simply described C’s crimes from what his victims and witnesses had said.  Just the facts, as they say.  The therapist read it and said he read my anger.

 

Anger? I thought.  That was just the facts.  I wonder what he would think if he saw my angry letter.

Wanna

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build you a fort

of sheets.quilts

blankets–

counterpanes

A Comforter Stronghold

pillow masonry

fortifying all our flying

buttresses

around this cathedral

the artisans, all children

nobody hurt there

not allowed–

the very law of love

forbids it

and all the pain

of our collective

history

would unravel like a braid each night

healing all these grievous wounds

stones for bread

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his conversation with the devil

his last meal

the things He gathers with his hands

broken treasure

if you being evil

He asks

(rhetorically–don’t answer that…)

give your children good things

stones for bread

our history

my dear

my darling

if I could only roll

all the stones away

and find you living

Bread among the stones

bred among stones

my love…

 

The Sombrero Galaxy

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I say

God:  Space Artist

and you respond:

“Heh.

The Universe +

gravitation=

collisions

and mergers

of galaxies.”

Nice

is another word for weightless

ephemeral

and sombrero

comes for the ancient

word for shadows

and sorrow.

I see splendor in

the arc of the living

God.

you shake your head

and I am inclined to ask whether

you genuinely believe

the Pieta

is just a big rock

worn down by friction?

canst thee see Jesus?

canst thee see the creator?

Michaelangelo amidst the stars.

For years

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I have

Had dreams of swimming

Miragy things

Slippery

The pool will be closed

Or inexplicably elusive

Sometimes I resort to paddling through

The shallows

I interpret these dreams

As desire

Need

To know

That I can find

The girl who like me

Slips through

Both shallows and deeps

The silence and the call

From lacrimal waters

“my robin”

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This happened years ago.  She was very young and had a nimbus of curls.  She was walking down a sidewalk holding your hand.  She was clearly enjoying your company. She kept calling you “my robin.”

When I think of the ways you failed her and why you should have done more, done something–advocated for her–that is the image I see in my head.  The last time I know for sure that your relationship to that little girl mattered.

 

At least to her.

new clothes

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I have been struggling with the urge to buy new clothes.  There is nothing wrong with new clothes, in fact, they can be wonderful.  The reason I am struggling is that I know that my clothes are not my real issue. Sure, I am a garage sale dresser, sure, I really need to watch the cookies (instead of eating them), but my real issue is that I want to leave my sadness behind.  I want to leave my anger behind.  It would be nice to leave grief and fear behind as well.

Since I know dieting is no fun and sadness dogs the human condition, new clothes seem to be the easiest route to happiness.

I think about Tamar tearing her embroidered sleeves and the parable of the wedding goer, scorning his new clothes and I think about mine–not mint cool in its season or glittery interesting or chic…

No. the clothing of Heaven.  The garments of Truth. The items of clothing I would have to wear to feel that I had walked through the doors of safety into Home.

You can wear your fluffy slippers at home, or pajama pants and a Batman cape.  That is why it is Home.

The place where only the clothing of sorrow is no longer

necessary.

 

our faces clothed in light