speak for your servant

Leaning on you for understanding
I fell out the window of mine
And was it that I fell so ill
That I lost your voice?

It was the word avant la lettre...

the grand forgery

For Mandela's centenary, a Penn prof writes that for South Africans,

His struggle was our struggle, his imprisonment was our imprisonment, his freedom was our freedom, his equality was our equality, his justice was our justice. He did it in the name of us all.

And it makes me think that all the things I ask in Jesus' name turn on all that He did in the name of us all.  A grand forgery that restores my true name, being, humanity.

-----

My days in South Africa are drawing to a close. In 13 days I leave this beloved country. I dread returning to the pace and pressure of not Philly, but Penn. Fieldwork – wherein my sole professional and academic responsibility is to be fully present to and immersed in human interaction, to transcend cultural partitions, to observe deeply and finely, and to inscribe the full humanity of myself and others... Well, this has been rehumanizing and restorative.

Just wandering through.

green pasture eyes don't lie

She looked frail. She looked scared. She did not look like she does now. 

 Those looks were deceiving. A boat that has been battered by a storm, sails torn, taking on water, yet still afloat and refusing to sink looks weak and frail. But the reality is that were it not strong, well made, and resilient it would have sunk a long time ago. She is stronger than the eye can see or the mind can understand.

 Of the four principle virtues -- courage, generosity, kindness and resilience, one can make a strong case that the most important is resilience. It is the virtue that makes it possible for one to lean into the wind hard enough to continue to demonstrate the other three.

 // Steve Edwards

who is this priest of the muses?

Sythia knew the sun delighted in her

חבצלת

with sun salutations
she springs awake to day
stands to greet someone
with palms outstretched
she bows and beams

was brown and bare in sleep
now cloaked with eastern light
the desert lotus lily
of the shadow valley light
has returned to rain

yesterday distending underground
light bursts forth from sticks and stone
the doorman sees his crown
in tomorrow

and Sythia wonders how
she ever questioned would
Monsieur stay if she left
in vigil if she slept

why
for sake of love
be buried
crushed
a seed
a rose
seeing the light in her
He, a rose
forgot her not

She, recomposed in love
blooms but soon
will be leaving
again

then
will be falling
again
a sleep

--

this one is for Sythia
who had him at yellow
forsythia is an "You're Asian!" shrub that arrests my afterwinter gaze

next up in #fakeeytymologies #realnews #flowershavepowerstoo, "Hello, Boris!" ??

home for the weekend

the leaving behind was hard...


hard prunings   dead weight
toxic faucets   freezing pipes

kitchen privileges   family tables

i went to nyc this past weekend to be a daughter, a sister, an auntie, a mother.



...but the reaping/inheritance are overwhelmingly safe and rich. matthew 19.29