Intentions Furrow the Brow

Wallowing on beds so greedy
she was lack of mother greedy
children raised the needy greedy

Fine she called now swine she called us
orange we feel now red she’d take us
down the river now who would save us

How intentions furrow the brow now
and attentions are withheld now
to establish greatest need now

Pregnant with wind
give birth to dust
with us
suffer

now

Sloth/Workaholic

As I thought about a creative way to explain how sloth affects our soul a sheet came to mind. Sloth binds awareness making movement difficult. What I mean is that its attitude is, don’t bother me with whatever you have going on I’m comfy here. The full picture is like this:

You are asleep someone wants to wake you up. They call to you. You roll over. They call again. You roll over. They yell they bang pots they set off fire crackers. You continue to roll over. What you didn’t realize was that your sheet, that nice sheet, has now got you tangled up. When you finally do wake up and see, oh I don’t know, the equivalent of a gun in your face. It will be pretty much impossible to move because you are mummy wrapped in this habit of rolling over. That is sloth.

Why are you rolling over? There are many reasons to do this. 

The opposite of sloth is what? Workaholims? I’d argue that workaholics are sloths in another disguise. The distraction of trying to accomplish, keep moving, is rolling over. If you can’t stop and deal with yourself or what's really going on that’s the same thing as never trying in the first place. You also end up dead.

Both ideas, classic sloth and workaholism, leave you kind of hungry. Because really who has time to eat if you’re busy or really asleep?

I’m talking soul level stuff.

“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.” Mat.5:6

Help Me But I Can’t Tell You How

Was it really only two months ago that I left? I feel like more time should go by that I should sleep a whole lot more before embarking on anything again. But by the second week of empty freedom I knew it couldn’t be long before I would try again.

All the good that has ever come from me was not me. My efforts always fell flat. They were less than worthy.

The thing I realize now is that I can’t forget my heritage nor should I. My heritage is to heal, to repair; all that I dream of is refuge and healing. In all my little problems and wanderings I find myself in the role of wise councilor. Had I ever listened to myself, I might know what to do with myself now.

There is music in the back of my head so faint when I listen hard it goes away. It worries me.

For me passion has been hard to define. It was so close to me enveloping me it was the air the earth and I couldn’t name it. It woke me in the dead of night it was suggestive it played with my hair and I couldn’t hear it. It burrowed deep down to the core of my being it fought my decisions and I felt it. No, it is still an unexplainable thing and I call it love.

Love is never what you think it is.

Those boys seem squint faced now. I don’t understand. The day I caught them fighting their eyes had been round. I had seen clearly what had happened but I couldn’t touch the core the secret that hung between them. They refused to talk. My powerful imagination wanted to fill in the blanks to tell the whole story. Maybe, maybe they, but I stopped my conscious self. There’s no way I can know if they won’t talk.

In the night the images and thoughts went round and round. They tried to fill in, to solve, fix, heal the situation but what could I really do? I didn’t have any answer.

The same is true for my friend who was placed under my special care through circumstances I wish had never happened. In my mind I tried the impossible to know what I couldn’t know. Of course I failed. When we are commanded to heal the sick it’s not what you think. We are given power but we cannot possess it. When we are assigned people to love there will be pain. It isn’t our love that is spent just as it isn’t our personal power that heals.

I struggle to let go. Leave the real work where it belongs. To be only the conduit of divine light not the possessor of it. I’m leaky.

I also need the light to be on me. I am wretched without it. Hard and lonely places have been my lot for decades, yeah, I can say that now, decades. I have fought and come out bloody ever time but never really healed. Not completely anyway.

The truth,

The truth is, spiritually I was the one who refuses to quit the one that would die on a battle field but had never learned when to ask for help. That’s what I was, a Loan Ranger. Hah! What was I blind?

I know that I need. I know that I am weak. I still don’t ask enough. I wander from place to place seeing if eyes will meet mine if hands will reach out to lift me up. The reason I can’t ask as much as I should is twofold. First I am out of practice. More importantly though is the words. There are no words when the opportunity comes.

“Help me but I can’t tell you how” is a frustrating message to deliver. I struggle with it. It hurts me that I have a hard time saying out loud what I need, because without this communication I will never heal.

Old Tree

 a song of the cross

Old tree standing on the hill
blood soaked roots that rise to kill
there hangs the fruit of man’s pain
on the old tree sanding on the hill

With this tree I will build a door
to a house with healing in its floor
there remain the broken now made whole
and no latch shall be fit to this door

I am the ax that’ll fell this tree
and all of the earth will pass over me
yet I’ll rise again to open the door
made of the old tree on the hill

Victory to the vulnerable, victory to the saints
step on the healing dance in his grace
for the torture had become our gate
and the bloody roots a sign post to the way

Mind Bomb

I just blew my own mind.

I was processing some things relating to Kung-Fu when I told myself this:

POWER DOES NOT EQUAL EFFORT.

When I hit or kick I can’t tell the difference in power from weak to strong. Often I don’t feel anything and am told the kick had more power. From this I conclude that power feel like nothing. How can I control something I can’t feel? All that changed was technique. When that’s right there is no effort. Effort tries to control or short-cut to a goal, it’s necessary to the process but at some point you have to forget it and not need to feel it anymore.

Why, I’ve always thought the feeling of effort was the same as power. I’m, I’m at a loss how to accept this new thought.

Beyond the Act

New beginnings and spring they go together, according to one of my yoga teachers. Fine, I’ll run with that.

It looks like my next adventure is one through holistic health care. Instead of focusing my energies on creating I will now focus my energy on healing what is broken, mind, body, and spirit. I like this idea it feels better to me than what was before.

My time in entertainment confirmed things in me that I suspected but couldn’t name. My awareness of stress levels, my strange ability to see c to the heart, all that and the exhaustion told me that I was probably in the wrong line of work.

My fear of not finding anything better did keep me there longer than was healthy. In some ways I wasn’t ready to accept the difficult work of mending the broken people. I can’t do this. I don’t have the resources. Yet I’ve been asked to time and time again.

I’m broken myself, just a dingy rotting string to hold things together. May that be enough.

Sometimes I think I’m being redundant. I can’t remember who I’ve said what to when.

Right now I have a gift card for a spa, from my last birthday, sitting next to my computer waiting to be used. I didn’t find the time when I really needed the message to get it and now that I have time well I can’t seem to make up my mind to just pick a random thing and go.