It’s been a minute
But life has kept happening
It never stops
Your growth is a daily reminder of that
You can drift to autopilot but not for long
The big blue windows of your eyes reaching for new depths
We played with you all morning
You smile between grunts and groans which say it’s feeding time
It practically always is
And then out of nowhere you’ll spit up
Abundance of nutrition
Your skin pink and glowing
Radiating health
For you the world is a love rich feeding machine
And the stresses and strains on our lives
Are beyond your comprehension
My aim is to keep it that way
In this period of reinvention
Adjusting my livelihood for the hits it’s taken in speaking my mind about the Jab and the tyranny progressing around it.
I don’t want to pretend it’s been easy because in many ways nothing has been harder
But at the same time the dangers of falling into self pity are robust when describing all this to you
Or even myself in the vortex of my own mind
And allowing self pity to run rampant will only guarantee a certain kind of low vibrational hell.
These days we walk by faith and not by sight
And we pray heavily
I’ve taken to running into the city
And going to an old twelve step meeting that I used to frequent back in the day
It’s about a three mile run there
And those rooms fill me with a transcendent hope in humanity and the human condition
Which is ironic cause for some they would consider us the dregs of society
But nothing could be further from the truth
No matter how messed up someone is in there
And no matter how messed up their predicament may be
I never lose site that they are in those rooms sharing
Which is a kind of reaching
A kind of effort to lift themselves out of whatever situation they have found themselves in
Whatever situation they’ve created or has been created
Because that is what our lives are
A mix of those modalities
Our own creation
And whatever situation we were born in
I do know
And I don’t know a lot
But I do know
That it’s best to view wherever you are as a situation that you created
Because as the creator of it
You can also be the master of getting yourself out of it
But not without the power of prayer and turning it over
I know all of these things sound like contradictions
But hear me out
You have to turn it over from a place of responsibility
You can’t turn it over from a place of self pity
Because if you are in a place of self pity
You are holding onto it
Playing with it
Like a kitten playing with a ball of yarn
You will be tempted in life to play with betrayal in a similar way
Some people let that define them and then descend into madness
It can turn into prison walls which build themselves around you.
I love listening to people share in those rooms
It’s the essence of spirituality
Tapping into your empathy
And concern for others
When you might be at the bottom of yourself
All of us dregs providing lifelines for one another
Some people hate the rooms and just see a bunch of people complaining about life
But when you are in dark place
Hearing others share their darkness with a message of hope surrounding is incredibly uplifting
And makes it quite clear that you aren’t alone in your difficulties
And that this in fact is just the human condition playing out
I’m looking forward to my run/meeting today
I’ve been in and out of those rooms for so long now and after a period of being absent and returning
I always think why have I let myself drift away
It’s my favorite kind of church
The church of the beautiful losers
The junkie saints
The boozed up holy rollers
People trying to lift themselves out of the muck
Through turning it over to a source that’s higher than they are
What could be more beautiful?
I’m grateful to have found my way back.
And it wasn’t on accident
My daily love for kava needed a new habit to replace it
I got no time to numb myself now. No time at all.
Yesterday getting home from the meeting
I took a long nap
And listened to a sermon
About the blood of Christ washing away our sins
How he died for us
The ultimate sacrifice so that we could be redeemed over and over again so long as we repent
And ask for forgiveness
We have to own fault in order to release it
In order to be absolved of it
First we must own it
To repent
To turn away
To be washed by the blood of Christ
And to be redeemed
To ignore the voice of the accuser
They say that’s the devil’s voice the one damning you within
The one telling you you’ve destroyed too much
You’ve gone too far
The one that says not even God can love you anymore
This is of course a lie
We can all be redeemed
In those rooms of repentance and grace
Where we try to lift ourselves out of any hole we are in
But we lift ourselves out
With the arms of faith
Never forget that you can always be redeemed
Never believe the voice that tells you it’s too late.
You simply have to repent and start again.
Be grateful for the new day
And whatever has been lost
Is meant to go
For God will replace it with much more in time
But it is also a blessing to be humbled in the world
To find your way back to the center of your most primary relationship
You and God fighting for your soul
Fighting for it to be big enough to make its way into heaven for eternity
Narrow is the path
And the path surely won’t be what you imagine it to be.
I woke up from the nap
And the sermon about his blood
And your mama stuck her head in the room
She said
Hey wanna meet my friend?
She had gone out earlier to meet her friend who she knew from church
Her friend had gone on missions around America praying over people and healing the sick
She was following a strange calling
I said sure and wiped the sleep from my eyes
Her friend lit up our little apartment
Her spirit excited with compassion and purpose
She explained her story and how she came to her mission
She told us of how she prayed over people and released demonic forces within them
She acknowledged that all that sounds wacky so to speak but it happened none the less
The power of prayer
And not just your own but of being prayed over
And loved from this spiritual plane
It really can work wonders
And as we were listening to her
You were asleep in your mamas arms
And I knew that she was gonna end up praying over us
That in fact her presence here was already a kind of answered prayer
She said she knew she would meet me and that she had seen all this before
I had no reason to doubt her
She asked for nothing in return
I explained to her what had been happening in my life
The hatred I had received and the loss of my livelihood
The difficulties that speaking out had provoked
And even the hiccups on my own path
Which hasn’t just been a straight line of strength but varied and wayward
Arriving now to a place of retribution
Grace and new hard earned faith and hope
The lights were coming back on in a darkened corridor
She said I know this sounds weird but can I pull the knives out of your back
I said sure and wondered how many she saw
When she said
It’s like a dartboard with countless knives still stuck in there
She released demons
She made movements like she was taking knives out of my back
We prayed for the ones I felt betrayed me the most
We spoke blessings over their lives
This is hard to do but it’s spiritual Kung fu
You can’t be redeemed or blessed walking around in a vortex of hate and resentment
You have to turn betrayal around and release the invisible knives
We prayed over your mama
We prayed over you
We prayed over your mamas friend
And we made plans to meet again on Sunday
To have a church service of our own making
At a certain point all we can do is turn it over and send our prayers up in the airplanes of faith
And know we are taken care of inspite of appearances
The sun is shining on me now
You are a lit up angle surrounded by love.
I got a hard labor job and joined the workforce
Art hanging and storage
Working on a truck
Moving giant pieces of art off of and onto walls
We’ll see how that plays out but it’s nice to know I can join the workforce after so many years as a professional diva
There’s a certain kind of freedom in a hard days work
And exhaustion which leads to exaltation
You can’t help but feel pride
A humble pride
The same kind of pride I feel running to the twelve steps in the city
When the world should have defeated me by now
And then walking and running home
Praying to God and future you
That we will see the same shining star someday
Holding hands and surrounded by fountains of ease.