Curling Inward

When I was 26, my mother was 46 and that's the year she began to disappear.

It didn't happen all at once. Like a leaf curling inward as the hours of sunlight grow short in fall, it seemed as though she grew smaller every day. Where her smile and energy had been infectious, weariness began to find it's home in her soul.

There was a wedge of distance between her and the world and every day it seemed as if that slice of remoteness expanded in the tiniest of increments and she became a boat that slowly drifted away.

I tried to talk to her about it. She wouldn't hear any of it. "I'm just tired. I don't have the energy to care about all the things I used to care about. Maybe I'm sick." But no doctor ever found anything wrong. And her energy didn't come back. And she never started to care about all the things that had once brought her joy.

Somewhere in her 46th year she began to disappear.

Now she's 66 and she's housebound.

Depression is a thief. It takes the things most precious to your soul and hides them so far away you forget they were ever good to begin with. At first you remember the energy and vitality and you wonder where they might have gone. And then slowly, you stop caring that they are gone as you struggle just to get through another day. The urge to create beauty becomes too much to contemplate and you bide your time, watching the clock so you can go to sleep for just a little while longer. The words that used to swirl and tumble in your head, demanding to be released through your fingers are now introverted and unapproachable.

Silence becomes the noise of your mind.

And I think I know all this because now I am 46. I am 46 and I feel like a leaf curling inwards. I am 46 and there is a thin slice of remoteness poking at my soul and the joy of creating words and pictures has become muted and desaturated.

I am 46 and perhaps depression is genetic.

I watched my mother curl inward and slowly drift away. I don't want to do the same.

Scenes From A Birthday Weekend

{Yellow Springs, Ohio}

{my girl's new girl?}

{birthday pumpkin pancakes!}

The train rumbles through
and I shift in my seat.

Could I jump on and
ride right on into tomorrow?

Could I could be hobo material –
with red handkerchief
knotted to rough stick
carrying my belongings?

The train rumbles through
and I shift in my seat.

I feel that rumble
and it feels native, instinctual –
ancestral.

The voices of other word gypsies
scream to me in train whistles
and I can’t translate them quickly enough.

The train rumbles through
and I shift in my seat.

And all the while the boxcar artists,
the word junkies hopping trains,
they give me hope.
Hope in the rumbles
and hope in the whistles.

They tell me
that I am, in fact, on my way.

My own unique way.

Everything

October Afternoon

An October afternoon -
in the grey rain of autumn,
I practice God in a single tomato
dangling on a twisted, dying vine.

I find divinity in this rain-damp

wasting away
and the turning inwardness of a garden,
collapsing into dreamless sleep.

I am learning to trust in the Being
who dreamed of winter darkness
and reminds me –

The flame turns inward now.

Where Have You Been?

where have you been?

you need to be here
{you can be one stubborn woman}

because right here –

{this moment?}

this is really all you've got

so live it all into reality

{all of it}
shake off the who-do-you-think-you-are
little girl fears


and live it

{live it big}

and then rest

{for as long as you need to}


and then do it all again
{one step. one breath. repeat. repeat. repeat.}

Pass It On

{i wrote a note to my friend Frank Wilson, who photographed the We Are the 99% protests in Findlay, telling him i had used his photo without permission and asking him if he wanted me to take it down. this is his response. and his answer is one the reasons he's my friend.}

"I'm thrilled you used my photo. I wish I knew her name. I wish I could sit down with her and connect with some of that long lost energy. I watched (and photographed) as she made her own sign. GREED was her idea and her creation. When finished, she jumped into the bed of the truck . . . but this was not good enough for this girl . . . she went for the rail. You ever try to balance yourself like that? Don't try. Balanced on the rail . . . and with her dirty knees from being on the groud making the sign . . . she reaches as high as her arms can reach and thrusts her message for all to see. The sign says GREED but the picture says FREEDOM. When I saw it I thought of that famous scene in the movie "Titanic" where whats-her-name is stretched out from the bow of the ship as if she is flying. You know the one? I knew in an instant I had my picture for the day and much, much more. No, don't take it down . . . . PASS IT ON!"

On The Fence?

"I believe in God, but not as one thing, not as an old man in the sky. I believe that what people call God is something in all of us. I believe that what Jesus and Mohammed and Buddha and all the rest said was right. It's just that the translations have gone wrong." 

~ John Lennon

Now What?

There is this knowledge that has been growing inside of me for quite some time. It's a knowledge that scares me.

I'm tired of being a Christian.

I first said it, out loud, in church a few weeks ago. And no one gasped {at least out loud} and no one threw me out the front doors with a scowl of disgust or a sigh of arrogant resignation. But, deep down, I believe those things were all right there. Waiting.

I'm tired of being a Christian if being a Christian means I'm supposed to be in lockstep with those who don't know me and don't know my heart.

I'm tired of being in association with those who use the word Christian to abuse and control my brothers and sisters.

I'm tired of being a Christian if being a Christian means that the gospel is reduced to a list of texts to ensure the prosperity of America, viewed through the backdrop of the American flag and heard through the background noise of the Star Spangled Banner.

I'm tired of being a Christian if being a Christian means I have to explain everything I do to some invisible score-keeper, busy tallying my actions. I'm just having a beer or two. . .I promise I won't get drunk. I'm going to skip church today to experience the wonder of creation. . .but I'm not abandoning the "gathering of believers." I might be gay, but I promise I will make up for it by being the finest, most busy believer you've ever had on your rolls. 

I'm tired of being a Christian if it means censoring every word that leaves my mouth on Sunday morning so as not to make anyone feel uncomfortable with my presence.

I'm tired of being a Christian if being a Christian means I constantly have to apologize for being me. 

And I think all this exhaustion began to creep in when I first began to understand that God doesn't fit in a nice little box with a steeple. It got hard when I started paying attention to the desires and curiosities of my soul and I had the nerve to wonder whether these new yearnings and cravings might actually be as important as the guilt-driven actions of going to church, or reading my Bible or helping out with the next church sponsored thing.

And what if ignoring my soul has actually driven me farther away from God?

I am tired of being a Christian. And yet God tells me, "It's just a name. And I have given you new names. You are Thinker. You are Writer. You are Photographer. You are Creative." But you don't just go around blurting that out at church now do you?

So now what? I want to follow Thinker God - not Christian God. I believe in Writer God and Creative God. I want to be led by this wild, imaginative God who delights in the mysterious, who created the wonder and the joy of life and doesn't force me into compromising my values and my self just to fit into an institution.

And I believe this God will let me wrestle as long as it takes.

I don't owe it to God to be a Christian. I owe it to God to listen to the truth of who I was created to be and I owe it to God to make the most of that creation.

And all of that might, or might not, involve a pew and a steeple.


*Even writing this makes me feel guilty, as I've spent my entire life building up a church, one way or another. But I can't help but look around the world and see the way that everything is changing. I see the We Are The 99% movement and I think that they have the nerve to look outside the institutions they have grown up with and see the devastation that institutional power has. Whether it's Wall Street Power or Church Row power, it's often corrupt and abusive and far more interested in the status quo than the empowerment of creation.

This photo was taken on one of the most conservative street corners in America - the corner of Main and West Main Cross in Findlay, Ohio. It gives me great hope. It was taken by my friend Frank Wilson, and more of his shots from this ongoing protest are available here.

Love What You Do

A Time and A Season

We move forward, even when convinced we are standing still.

That's the lesson I've learned through this summer of silence.

The seasons change around us, times change and regardless of our plans, our personal failures, our bouts with fear or grief, one day we look up and notice that we aren't quite in the same spot we thought we were.

“You’ve been awfully quiet lately,” she said, and I knew what she meant; what she was feeling, because I felt it too.

All I felt was tired. Too tired to keep up the running conversation I had been having on paper with myself for years. Too tired to lift my camera from its resting spot and see the world through different eyes. Too tired to experience my life as anything more than a task list, with each hour carefully planned and precious few seconds to remember that there is a time and season for everything.

And then yesterday, standing under our massive old walnut tree that has absorbed at least a century of knowledge, I noticed it. There were golden leaves quietly falling all around me and I knew what had happened. The season had changed.

My season had changed.

And for a moment I wondered how it happened. And then I didn't any more. Because the miracle isn't in how it happened.

It's in the fact that somehow, without my permission, it just did.