and, trembling with fear, told him the whole truth…

Padraig O Tuama is in town as resident poet for 3 months with the Uniting Church, I believe his greatest gift to me has been sharing his whole truth and the space that he creates that invites me to share my own – and the shared healing that is found through that.

These are snippets from tonight “poetry, prayer, promise & protest speaking to humanity’s hidden yearning for decency, goodness, survival and companionship” which may not make sense out of context but might be enough to inspire you to look further (books on Amazon) or ask me about it someday…

Trinity in me: hopeful theist, agnostic and someone in pain

In Irish no words for yes or no. Will answer “I will”, “I can”, “Tis”, “May be so”

God of watching * God of silence * God of darkness

Why do we have to dehumanise to delineate?

Once I was blind, now I’m blinder still

The people stood in darkness and in it became their light.

Appearance of the Blessed Virgin Mary (BVM)
“You never liked me much did you..”
“No. No, I didn’t”
“That’s ok”

Moments of consolation in the midst of desolation

God is the crack where the story starts and we are the crack where the story gets interesting.

“It is in the shelter of each other that people live”

Just One [hold this space]

« The UK 2013 trip

on crises and catastrophes »

http://holdthisspace.org.au/just-one/

just one

I ask for just one miracle this weekend:
that I will no longer believe the impossible is.

That I will find the faith to believe
that liberation will come
for those who are imprisoned by their own
- or another’s -
fear and judgement.

That I will find the faith to believe
that the most intractable minds can be changed
– even my own.

That i will find the faith to believe
a different world will be born
from the empty hells of this one.

That I won’t stop living for the end
of all that would destroy us.

Me?

“Me? I’ve been lonely my whole life for as long as I can remember, since I was a child.  Sometimes being around other people makes it worse… When you’re young, you think its going to be solved by love. But it never is. Being close – as close as you can get – to another person only makes clear the impassable distance between you.”

“If being in love only made people more lonely,
why would everyone want it so much?”

“Because of the illusion. You fall in love its intoxicating, and for a little while you feel like you’ve actually become one with the other person.  Merged souls, and so on.You think you’ll never be lonely again.  Only it doesn’t last and soon you realise you can only get so close, and you end up brutally disappointed, more alone than ever, because the illusion – the hope you held onto all those years – has been shattered.

But see, the incredible thing about people is that we forget.  Time passes and somehow hope creeps back and sooner or later someone comes along and we think this is the one. And the whole thing starts all over again.  We go through our lives like that, and either we just accept the lesser relationship – it may not be total understanding, but its pretty good – or we keep trying for that perfect union, trying and failing, leaving behind us a trail of broken hearts, our own included.  In the end, we die as alone as we were born, having struggled to understand others, to make ourselves understood, but having failed in what we once imagined was possible.

How to be alone, to remain free, but not feel longing, not to feel imprisoned in oneself. That is what interests me.”

He spoke of human solitude, about the intrinsic loneliness of a sophisticated mind, one that is capable of reason and poetry but which grasps at straws when it comes to understanding another,
a mind aware of the impossibility of absolute understanding.
The difficulty of having a mind that understands that it will always be misunderstood.

“But as it stands, true empathy remains impossible.  And so long as it is, people will continue to suffer the pressure of their seemingly singular existence.”

“And mistreat each other, won’t they?”

Ray nodded. “Horrendously.”

(quote from “Man Walks into a Room” – Nicole Krauss)

O, the shame of it

the turbulence of the world behind my eyes spills out
shame burning
guilt gasping
heart constriction

shock

I see your shock at my nakedness.
The nakedness of my whole truth.
My vulnerability.
Like a foetus curled, cold, helpless.

Quick. Retreat. Apologise.

Tuck it back in, decorum returns.
Healing might not have happened but my humanity affirmed your own.

Somehow with our shit, our baggage, our brokenness
we still find a way to live loving one another.

it is very dark there
and very lonely
in the world behind my eyes

Everything A-OK?

I’ve got you pegged

For anyone who has been to stay with Ched & Elaine in Oak View, you may know of their little system for napkin individualisation which is that you write your name on a peg, attach your peg to your napkin and it’s yours for the duration of your stay (or at least until it gets dirty!).  Once they have written a name on each side, these pegs graduate to the clothes line and every time they hang out the laundry they see the names of all the different people who have come to stay – “a great cloud of witnesses” in the sacred ordinary things.

Last night I ran prayers before our open community meal and we all wrote names of people we’ve journeyed with that we want to remember and pray for.  I’ve never been great at ‘prayers of others’ but I’m pretty good at keeping up with the laundry; although I will acknowledge laundry can be one of those jobs that feels never ending. Brother Lawrence was a monk in the 17^th century who believed in practising the presence of God “…we ought not to grow tired of doing little things for the love of God, who regards not the greatness of the work, but the love with which it is performed.” I’m going to do my laundry with love and mindful prayers for others.

I want to dream

I want to dream
I want to dream together
I want to dream together and for your vision plus my vision
to surpass anything either could imagine on our own
I want to use my gifts to serve your vision, and
for you to do the same for me
I want the dream to be organic and to change
as you and I change
I want the dream to look different in different kinds of light
- sunlight, moonlight…
and seasons
- spring, autumn…
I want to talk about the dream as we walk along, catch the bus, share a meal together
I want to know the intimacy of shared thoughts with you
common and sacred at the same time
I want a dream that in its dreaming makes me smile in my sleep and
hold hope for a whole world through the day
I want a dream that needs a roll of butchers paper, five colours of post it notes and
four coloured marker pens to explain and still doesn’t really capture its soul
I want to dream together with you
I want to dream together
I want to dream

Sunset over the Nullarbor

Therefore I am going to allure her;
I will lead her into the wilderness
and speak tenderly to her.
There I will give her new growth,
and will make in her darkness a door of hope.
There she will respond with devotion
as in the day she first knew freedom.

Hosea 2:14-15 (sort of…)

Conform

As if the shop windows, billboards, advertising, etc. of dominant culture weren’t enough…

 

Listen

I lost my voice again today.
Not from shouting too much.
No… more mute than that, more fut- (I’ll)

repress, supress to impress you
and make you feel good about yourself
as I diminish. Finish saying nothing because…

I lost my voice again today
it was not drowned out
indeed it rarely swims
being afraid of the water
undercurrents
submerged logs
stagnant bogs
blank blog
page
empty of hope and dreams.

I lost my voice again today.
Thoughts are teeming through my mind but
my feelings make my tongue numb
I want to get them out
but I doubt
myself and you move on
to your next (point)
out to me my flaws, their cause, no pause for understanding.
I want to do work of worth, birth something beautiful together but
you are so protective of the turf there might as well be a “Keep Off The Grass” sign out (front)

up, make me an offer, negotiate, my way or the highway
that does not head in the direction I want to go.

I lost my voice again today.
I was looking for what was true, went via your agenda, don’t make this about my gender.
Except, of course, that it is.
Lord, why am I still here?
Why do I care?
The words of an individual
indivisible from their meaning
gleaning, glistening
purity out of obscurity
my truth…
Listen.
This is my truth.

This is my whole truth.

 

Inspired by the poetry of Joel McKerrow and Stevie Wills at Surrender and resident poet at the City Library this month Alia Gabrez, Centre for Poetics and Justice