Category Archives: child advocacy

Reflect the sky 

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some things remain dark

Obsidian dark

No matter how much you try to put distance between

The two of us

The video footage cannot, will not excise your presence

Obsidian dark

Is not your chicken-scratch handwriting

The horrible story I made you write down

Or the things you left out…

That so many people helped to…diminish

None more than you

The damage which will always be

dead dog on my chest

Ghosts of dogs should haunt us both

But let yours bark incessantly outside the grainy film of your transgressions

While mine 

Returns whole, resurrected even,

To the cement driveway by the old house where the children played with the water hose and the blue plastic wading pool 

Joy

They fill the screen with joy

For a moment even you could see

The way the thinnest layer of water poured out on rough cement

Reflects the sky

Reflects the light from the endless sky

Reflects the glory of this endless day we

…walk toward the sun, my one-time-child

Before the night 

Falls forever

Chimera Gastrulation

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Words matter, mainly because they stand for something meaningful.  For instance, if you call genocide “the great solution,” or “living space” it is still really just genocide, but the strange, deforming euphemisms you have thrown up in front of the horror of murder might confuse the dim or comfort the monstrous.

So, for instance, if you call an unholy mixing of embryo parts from two species, one human, one not, a chimera and you call the embryo parts gastrulation, and you leave out any issue of obtaining consent from the very small and then you leave out the part about keeping these living entity for endless experimentation then destroying them.

Even then it sounds unbearable.

Some things we should not do not just because they are monstrous and destructive.  Some things we should not do because they make us monsters of destruction.

A.D.

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you must believe in

The invisible world–

Atoms, neutrons, quarks 

And other molecular angels

These bits of light and matter

Swirl around us

Halos of an inevitable world 

You bend to kiss his brow

No longer visible with naked eye.

But what of the others?

There to receive him

Just beyond the scrim 

Clouds of witnesses

The insubstantial irreplaceable 

Eternal us

Funny how often Lincoln shows up in our 

Iterations of heaven

And how young grandma always looks

As though you and I could 

Stand the light 

Ten million stars are just

This single flickering candle in 

A fleck of night

He dusts off his shoulder,

Strong right arm

Gathers our once-mortal hearts

Into immortal, imperishable we

We who will stand

Candidates for this eternal

Song sung loud

By our six year old selves

Forever

Kicked off the ranch–part one

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I find the sentences which include when I did the bikini contest or the bikini contest I was in require explanation.

Explanation because I do not believe in body image competitions.

Explanation because I am a round, soft, almost-50 year old mama.

So the fact that I participated in the Texas Ski Ranch Cablestock Bikini Contest of 2016 is as worth noting as are the varied consequences of doing so.

So first–why?

I had been going to TSR for several years and was acquainted with their bikini contest because they ran promos for it on an infinite loop. An avert your eyes kind of loop.

Efforts at dialogue seemed to be unproductive.  Prayer, Bible study, and a remarkably specific fleece led to my reluctant decision to sign up for the bikini contest.

Much to my own consternation.

Stillness

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stay in the box

All cardboard and glue 

The bars you have hewn with your fingernails

Purely arbitrary 

But wait still 

Look for the way the open spaces

Casts shadows 

Train your ears for approaching 

Footsteps that

Do not come

You will be alone with the voice in your head

Telling you be still 

And know that I am God.

Splitting the difference 

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According to His most ardent biographers, when Jesus was born he got a star, an angel choir, multiple prophetic and celestial intros, a visit from some prominent foreign astronomers, and an animal feed tray for a bed.

It seems like the divine side of the birth announcement for this kid was legit–angel choirs and all.  But the human side was sub-par.  The innkeeper could have let the pregnant girl use his digs.  But he did not.

Easy, I suppose, to judge the inhospitable of Bethlehem for their general indifference to an infant King.  Harder to face our own.

The question for each so-called believer in this tiny bundle of Infinite Light is–do you see Him?  At the breakfast table or the DMV?  In the bad driver or the white-collar criminal?

It is hard to see Jesus in us. We are often a selfish, short-sighted, venal bunch of sheep.

Sheep on a hill somewhere in the night.

Beneath a star.

In the presence of angels, so close to our King.

The other alternative 

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The sermon was lovely–feeding of the five (to 20 plus) thousand.

Five loaves and two fish expanding out to a feast for thousands.

Is it difficult to miss the metaphors?  The abundance of God?  Jesus providing through his own personality to satisfy all those souls by the sea.

But what if the boy had said no?

What if he had not shared? 

Jesus never needed us to contribute.  He tells us that if we don’t praise Him, the rocks will cry out.

He doesn’t need our help.

But if we keep our lunch to ourselves?  We miss our portion in the miracle.

We need Him to make us characters in His story, not the other way around.

Good reminder when I am hungry and not sure it is a good idea to share my lunch.

When Jesus gives, He pours it all out for us.  

Down to the last drop.

Good Will Tenting

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when I was wee-small I corrected the store name Goodwill to Oldwill.  Also I once inadvertently hurt the feelings of a much-beloved pre-school teacher when I applied an age-equals-wisdom rubric to her chronological age.

She seemed exceedingly wise and kind and calm.  So I told her she was 85.  At the time this was the Nobel Peace prize of ages to me.  I did not see wrinkles or old as a factor with humans.

Resale stores, absolutely, but people–not so much. My teacher was probably in her late twenties to mid-thirties?

I am going somewhere with this: assessment.

When I scan my junk mail for the misplaced real mail, I find message after message from hardworking Davises and Millers trying to give me some relief from student loans and a variety of entities using female given names and announcing their desire to date me or worse.

Oh, the anomalous anonymity of the Internet! These hardworking phishers and scammers just don’t get me.

We all want to be truly known and loved for who we really are, yet this is mostly a mirage.  At least in my culture.

We are often not capable of deep commitment or unswerving faithfulness, and we are quite damaged by the sturm and drang of this flawed and broken world. We like empty images and cliches, not the challenges of maturity, restoration, and love.

Which leads me to Big Agnes tents…

After one disastrous night in a tent at the beach during a storm, I do not consider myself a camping girl, but when I saw the (again, junk email!) ad for Big Agnes tents it was love at first sight.  Big? When seeking shelter, big is good. And Agnes?  Agnes rocks.  The name means pure but sounds a lot like the Latin word for lamb–agnus.  Big Pure?  Big Lamb? Lamb of God?

Lamb of God 

Who takes away the sins of the world 

Have mercy on us...

…damaged goods

Damaged goods in a storm 

In need of shelter

I will run to the Lamb, find shelter in Him.

Forever

“I will never leave you nor forsake you”

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Over the course of my life I have been booted out of a variety of clubs..oh…I mean communities of faith.   Always for taking a stand on some issue, always with the subsequent silence and loss.

Financial accountability. Child safety.  Confronting greed, lust or both–there are all kinds of ways to trudge down the “narrow road” in christianity.

Which is sometimes confusing and disorienting but never totally forsaken.

Jesus is there, saying what he says to all of us–I will never leave you nor forsake you.”

We will never get that kind of promise from anyone else.  We humans are nothing if not forsakers. We bolt at a pin drop.

Not him.  Jesus stays with us.

And always he says the same thing. “You are in good company, darling…always.”