crazy little day...

I always want to have something insightful to say

and so today I'll say that I am loved

and hope that it's enough

<3

procrastination changed my life...

Tonight I read the book, Acts of Faith: The Story of an American Muslim, the Struggle for the Soul of a Generation by Eboo Patel and it changed my life.

I had an epiphany about my life and about what I have been doing with my life. Everything all of a sudden culminated in one thing in this book. And in something my grandmother said to me that I didn't think much about until I read this book. There is more thinking to be done on this. More conversations that need to take place. Conversations with my grandma and my mom. With Cindy and with Gelayol. And most likely with you if you read this.

I've got to finish finals stuff but I had an epiphany and so I needed to start thinking out loud....more thinking coming soon....more poetry as well, there is a lot brewing in my soul I just need to sit down and let it out.

Read Eboo Patel's book....

Welcome to my Soul

Do you ever hit a point in life when you realize you do what you are talking about and that you are smart?

I'm finally there in my life!


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Why not just apply and let fate decide?
Why limit yourself when you aren't even in charge?

Good point...maybe because I'm scared....


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Sometimes I wish I was Jewish because of how amazing they are

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I believe that we live in a myth of imperfection. We believe we aren't perfect. We've been told repeatedly we aren't perfect. I've come to believe it is a lie.

You are perfect because you were created by the definition of perfection. You don't believe me ask God or ask Rabbi Naomi (she's one of my heroes I've decided)

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My grandfather has diabetes and has an infection in the bone in foot...
This terrifies me...
My mom said he and my grandmother were in good spirits (they are two of my heroes as well)

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I feel blessed by so many people right now and they don't even know it
I think I will tell them

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To give someone affection is to bless them with something indescribable
I'm not kidding it is a proven scientific fact...I learned it today at school
Although I already knew affection was essential to life

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I'm looking for God outside of Christianity
In the hard places
In other religions
In being female
In feminist theology

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Welcome to my Soul

Highlights from thanksgiving week with my family coming soon :)

ponderings of this school week...

"God/dess" Karen Harris

"Divinity resides in the moments where our senses are completely open--it is our openness of perception that makes every moment divine" Hindu Tantra

"All pleasure is essentially spiritual--it creates a new world beauty" Mysticism and Madness

"Desire in the service of enlightenment" Kashmirshavism

"...to have the courage to cultivate a society that can live with its own flagrant contradictions." (271) The Ornament of the World by Maria Rosa Menocal

"Athens has nothing to do with Jerusalem" or "Athens has everything to do with Jerusalem"

"When everything else falls away the music comes in to keep me company in stuffy silence..." Me

laughter.

release.

the outward expression
of inward elatious joy,
raised to the magnitude
of the precision of happiness,
carried on the breath
of the lotus flower
that is passed,
from Creator to creation
with the purpose
of simple and refined delight,
in spite of the cloud cover of sadness
as we are beckoned just to smile.

November 6, 2007

My dad and my step-mom have been married for 14 years today.

What this means:
-They have been married for 14 years (duh)
-I have had a wonderful woman to call my mother for 14 years
-We have been a family for 14 years
-I've known God is real for 14 years

What a wonderful day...

sleep?

I have mini panic attacks whenever i try and sleep because my mind starts to think about the future and grad school and having to start over with the whole friendship thing. I have got to figure out what I am going to do.

mmmm....november....

So, God and I haven't been communicating recently. A more truthful way to say that would be I haven't be listening because I know God's talking I'm just not sure where I am. Well I know where I am I'm a little dead currently. I'm finding nothing and it sucks because I have a deep passion for what I believe and I can talk for hours about it and be extremely passionate and that's great but right know I'm dead. I need something new. I need something fresh. I need God apart from my passion and with my passion because God is my passion. One thing my professors always say about my papers is that they can feel my passion about who I am and what I believe. I love that!! I want people to know my passion!! Right now I'm in a rut though, and I need something more I'm not moving forward. I'm not going anywhere; I'm pretty sure I'm walking in a circle because I think I'm seen that tree before. I need to find something to not necessarily restart my faith, because it's there I feel it, but I need something to get it moving again. I need a push because I'm here but I'm just idling and for some reason I can't find drive (sorry for the car analogy but it works).


So, there's the beginning of November. Maybe something new? I'm pretty sure November is Swedish for new....or maybe I just need it to be...

forward....

forward...

forward...

pushed on
by inspiration
of divine proportions
--listening--
for the voice
that comes from within
and around
carried on the wind
through creation
in search of my ear
that is idly blocked
by melodies
of aesthetically pleasing sounds
that tickle and tantalize
working with the divine
to create
something
worth
knowing

October 23, 2007

watching the moon through
the skylight protective filter
from reality
not having to touch it with my eyes
but just observe it from below
at a distance safe enough to ensure
I--feel--nothing
except the beat of my own heart
that even now begins to betray me
to my spirit
and that sound is not silenced
even as I sleep with the enemy
to distract and be someone
I am not...
as I stop listening,
and stop talking.
But I am not numb,
even as hard as I try,
the skylight is an illusion I use
to protect myself
when in reality
I'm slowly fading away
into the moonlight
that I've been hiding from
as I move through life.

October 24, 2007

Art in the form of illegal activity
breaks legs and heals hearts
In forms and sounds of unknown languages
that shift consciousness to a new reality.

Peace signs painted on walls
and flowers inside barrels of guns
Carving a new path
to heal the world with our hands.
And bring us back,
before institutions,
before we made ourselves rulers,
before we were taught we couldn't feel like that.

Pushing the limits to create
and coming back
finding a new way to get there.

October 18, 2007

Ripped wings
attempt to navigate
through the falling cosmic
order of the changing of seasons

October 18, 2007

musings of an october morning?

So you know it's around 2am apparently (even though daylight savings isn't until November this year but I don't think anyone else got that memo). I can't sleep and I'm sick. I probably can't sleep because I took a 4 hour nap at around 3pm and I didn't wake up until noon today.

I've been thinking a lot lately about things I can't control, mainly my health. Now I know that you can control your health with the way you live, but I can't control my thyroid condition. Things are good my doctor reduced my thyroid meds I take but other things always seem to happen. I'm now apparently extremely iron deficient. He informed me that eventual heart failure is a side affect of my thyroid condition. I'm not afraid of this. I'm not going to stop living. This is just the way it is and I've been thinking about it.

I wish I wasn't allergic to cats I do think they are rather cute and wouldn't mind having one.

More poetry coming soon...

the fluidity of identity...

-wearing a ring in my nose
-applying to get my M.A. in Christian Spirituality and Interfaith Communication
-waiting for a man to come along worth loving
-rocking converse
-to write love on her arms
-no longer sleeping with the enemy
-eco-friendly
-vegetarian-ish
-organic
-rejuvenated
-inability to go home but not afraid
-growing up
-deciding on calvin crest next summer
-san francisco?
-long beach?
-berkeley?
-comfortable in my skin and in myself

My Soul

The flowers have lost their scent
in the lack of sleep and dreams
looking for colors that have melted
into the margins of everyday life
seeking solitude in sound
and rhythm in tea leaves
that have been left to dry in
the center of my soul
that is cracked and seeping
out through my tears












September 22, 2007

Fear

Am I a negative stereotype?
A contradiction of terms wrapped in
an enigma of images portraying
falsehoods passed off as realities
telling myself I am a seeker of
truth when really I am a giver of
sugar-coated lies that even
I've begun to believe with the best
of intentions.....






September 4, 2007

The wellspring of life pierces through the
atmospheric pressure of a mind clouded
with intricate networkings and weavings
of jazz beats that are sharp and flat
and not at all forgiving in their
speed as the rain pours in through the
small crack that has formed and begins drowning out the
beat and creating a new rhythm to swing
and sway to and be free to
as it sings of tomorrow and what forever might be...






August 28, 2007

something tells me it's you...

her tea leaves
told a story of a life too long for
one so young
traced by the lines on her face,
the gray hairs amid the brown,
and the scars she possessed
that told stories of triumph and failure
but always of surviving,
and always of living,
and always of loving
remembering each fondly and not
regretting but merely letting it add
to the garden she's grown....





August 31, 2007

For the first time last night
-----I laughed
My sides split open and all the
indescribable moments of life
came puring out and took shape;
And I breathed them in and out
desiring for them to never end,
Longing to discover each moment again and
attach it to my identity
---that in is need of definition
by something that isn't negative
but is beautiful...






September 22, 2007

Gently dipping reeds follow their own rhythm
as the wind blows them in and out of view
Of the dark clouded sky attempting to
find the sun in the midst of a
naked morning
filled with promises of rain and rebirth










August 28, 2007

The sprial down insanity of
the wind storm shook my foundations---
-----as the moon set
on a century of abuse, contemplating
time as if it were a teardrop in
history not willing to face what has
come and what is going to be seemingly caught
in an instant of concave maddness
and pear shaped dreams that
I am allergic to longing to use these feathers
to fly away to a reality that doesn't make my eyes water
with fear and saddness---
----where I can dream and wake up to find it
has been true all along....









August 20, 2007

For You

Speaking backwards and forwards into my life

Giving my boxes doors fro me to get out of

Making me realize that I haven’t laughed in a very long time

And that I never really knew what laughter was

Letting the abandonment of joy and friendship wash over me not expecting anything

But hoping for your heart

Not wanting to ruin what there is

So hiding what I want there to be…

August 20, 2007

A Lifetime

in compromised moments when decisions stop existing and the only thing audible is the sound of breathing—
the red hot heat of energy that emerges is embraced without question through the arms of a stranger that is allowed in—
allowed into intimate moments that become distorted and tarnished,
filled with shame and anger but the feeling get pushed so easily aside as the embrace becomes stronger and as the nights grow longer—
until she can’t resist any more and surrenders to the desires of a moment
in exchange for a lifetime of questions,
a lifetime of trying to explain,
a lifetime of hoping for love,
a lifetime of trying to accept forgiveness and grace.

August 9, 2007

A Reflection

My heart almost cracked with the effort of trying to love you,
As the deep magnitude of the morning light swallowed me up—
Not belonging to a time like this feeling outside and painful,
Living by a hope that is impenetrable and daunting.
Caught in the shadows of the noon day sun attempting to gain footing when there is no where to stand,
Learning how to live from the blades of grass and the wind through the tree tops
Stepping out of myself to maybe think of something else for a moment.
With a view of everything as heaven and heaven as everything,
with no desire to tell the difference,
As a longing to be imprisoned by happiness brings a joy indescribable by any means…

August 8, 2007

Lord let me love,

love with a fury and with clanging,

Let the sun rise on the dawn of what it means to be beloved

To be etched with an image of truth,

that collapses the lies of my life.

Lie that I have believed about who I’ve been created to be—

For this is not a time of timidity but of action

before I lose who I am…

August 5, 2007

The summer sunset edges the rims of endless clouds in pink and orange.
as the scent of fresh cut grass is carried on the wind of a new evening,
The first stars appear in the midst of broken memories trying to be pieced together through a life of summers—

Summers of changes—of beginnings and ends—of broken hearts that were required for greater love—
Summers of giving everything up for only God knew what,
Not realizing that it is only because of the summers that life was ever possible,
Because each summer brought freedom in the process of madness and memory.

August 3, 2007

In the still small moment of quiet music,
As the aspens quake out their song in the wind,
The cherry blossom scars are barely recognizable as my heart heals.
Pushed on by a melody barely audible even by my own soul,
I collapse into the arms of this moment allowing ever part of me to resonate with what it means,
As my hands gently reach for what is next without losing what is now.

July 27, 2007

Freedom

Freedom is a dirty word filled with sharp edges and dark spaces;
Free is a four letter word that leaves a sour taste in my mouth.
I throw these words around as if they were a child's play thing,
Not taking responsibility for what they mean as they role so easily off my tongue.
I distort their image and I make them into something unappealing because my freedom is something it was never intended to be--
Because my freedom depends on me and what I can do.

My freedom, is dependent on the broken heart of a child--
My freedom, is dependent on the shattered dreams of a teenager--
My freedom, is dependent on lost time and bad choices.

So it's no wonder the freedom I give is uninviting and ugly because this freedom isn't free at all.
And, at the end of the day when I have lived in my so-called "freedom" I realize I want a freedom that is technicolor and sweet--
but how could I possibly find that?




July 4, 2007

let go

She stands alone on her own two feet
In an attempt to find a life,
A life that this world cannot offer her.

Like a song she knows the words to but has never heard before,
She is so close to the melody,
If only she would hum along and allow herself to sing.

The fear that grips her soul is merely a block,
To everything that is within reach,
If only she would allow herself to let go.

March 20, 2007

...what we've been missing...

Falling into pits of finely sharpened rose petals
In the seduction of twilight
Looking for the stars that aren’t there yet
Praying that they’ll appear
So that this treacherous path will be made clear
In these perilous moments that are not quite sun and not quite moon
Is a life caught between time and emotion trying to find a way out

February 29, 2007

A lesson in Waiting....

This silence is cold and deep,
It penetrates my soul in places I can't reach.
From the depths I cry out for an answer,
anything,
even just a word,
or a breath in this silence.
This is not the answer I am looking for,
silence is not the answer I want.
Perhaps it is the only answer,
An answer of silence,
An answer of waiting,
An answer of patience.
Something that causes seeking,
within the places I can't reach.
I do not doubt Your faithfulness,
the silence is just so deep.

February 2007

Would You?

how do you capture a breeze on a sunny day,
as it goes through the tops of the trees,
gently swaying them side to side as it matches the rhythm of your heart?

or as the hair whips out of your face as the breeze,
opens you,
exposes you,
reveals you,
to the sunshine that is peering through gently,
waiting to be enjoyed,
waiting to be seen,
waiting to be loved?

or can you capture it at all as it swirls around you,
as it goes through you,
as it resonates within you,
as it becomes a part of you?

if you caught it would it change it,
would you lose part of it,
would you lose the beauty of it,
would you lose the mystery of it?

if the possibility to catch it came along
would you take that chance?

September 16, 2006

Welcome...

enjoy...

you'll be able to read them as i write them...

right now there will be a lot because of old ones and the summer...

this is just the beginning...




Nec tecum nec sine te

.....Neither with you not without you can I live...