A Plea for Mercy

I feel as though I am made of spikes, taking up all the room in a place, impaling everyone in it; my thoughts continually peck at my liver, no rest is to be had.

I have always hung in the balance between the sky and the ground.

People who hang there are destined to want to hang their necks out to dry.

We’re on fire, gritting our teeth through the mauling burn.

We are raising our kids high above the flames, doing our best, praying that the fire doesn’t scorch the bottoms of their innocent soles.

I feel guilt because I summoned him here, never having truly received his consent. And yet he smiles up at me, as if to thank me for the joy of being alive.

I know that feeling. I look at my child and I know I owe him all the joy, because he saved my life and continues to do so.

All the pain has a purpose. Our lives serve as art for God, to play out in this 3rd dimensional world before our souls either take flight up to God, or spin into the opposite direction away from Him.

I only want to fly, I know my wings will burn and I will die, just let me hold the face of the sun once.

Christ, hold my head in the fire, turn me into ash, until all that remains is the small shining of my mind, sparkling like a diamond in the center of what once was my brain.

The only option is surrender. The only position is prostration. The only plea is for mercy.

Sacrificial death of our wills, each day, each hour, each second.

We are doing our best.

We are the body.

Lord have mercy.

Have mercy on me.

Update:

This blurb will be short and sloppy: I didn’t have any intention on updating my blog anytime soon, but I heard a favorite old poem today, which sparked a sudden glimmer of inspiration.

I haven’t been writing lately, besides the usual notes app journaling I’ve done since I owned a smartphone.

I haven’t been doing much creatively for weeks it feels.

Though I have been singing and playing piano, I had forgotten what an emotional release it was. When I had to move back in with my folks a couple of times, I would go out into their two-room outbuilding where they stored my dad’s golf collection, civil war dioramas and thousands of dollars worth of Christmas village shit. My grandmother’s very out of tune piano was in there amongst all the trash bags of tinsel and miniature trees.

I’d come out here to smoke Marlboros and play that busted ass piano, alone in that stinky, dusty, hoarder palace.

My dad hated when I played. He thought it was loud and boring. It was a smallish thing, I can’t remember the brand, but it was made in the 70’s. It was located in the center of my grandparent’s house.

I took piano lessons and spent as much time as I could practicing and teaching myself underground Regina Spektor songs (SO depressed she is a Zionist) until eventually my dad would yell from his bedroom to stop playing or my grandfather would come out and complain about it. But if my mother was nearby, she would growl at them to stop and let me play as long as I wanted. She loved the way it sounded. It was a constant battle and eventually playing started to give me anxiety, so I stopped for a long time.

My father recently informed me that in their move, he hacked the front of my piano off with a hatchet. My mother cried. Somehow, I now find all of this absurdly hilarious.

I get it. It was so out of tune and too heavy to move into their smaller home.

A few times he did say that he wishes that he was able to take it out where me and Ethan got married by the creek and leave the thing there to let nature take it over, to caress it delicately with moss and vines. An old piano in the forest. It’s the thought that counts.

It wasn't the first time my father destroyed something I loved. My earliest memories involve the crab apple tree in our back yard at our house. I climbed this tree from the moment I could climb until I was about ten. I loved that fucking tree. Every summer I would get a bad stomach ache from gorging my small body with her sweet, sun warmed apples along with all the mulberries I could gather. I wonder how many worms I unknowingly ate...

I knew each curve of her trunk, she held me and swung me my first ten years on Earth. She was the easiest tree to climb; you could even get to the top though she was actually quite a large apple tree.

One day my brother's were going to have some boy scout friends over for a campfire.

I came outside and my dad had taken a chainsaw to my beautiful tree.

She lay there in a pile of branches like human limbs all on top of one another. My heart tore.

I cried and cried. You just didn't call out my dad in those days so I ran to my mom to complain.

"He did it because it was dead," she said, trying to console me.

But he hadn't talked to me about it. I didn't know the tree had been dead. My father didn't know and didn't care to know that I loved that tree with all my heart and I would have liked to say goodbye, to climb in her branches that had cradled my tiny feet so often. I can still summon the feeling of her smooth, silvery bark against my baby skin.

+++

After my last post, I felt burned to a crispy crisp. I rode that little glimmer of inspiration right down to ash.

Plus:

Life is hella scary right now.

I am facing parts of myself that I was content with never setting eyes on ever again. I am dealing with difficult business situations but also learning so much. When does any if this get any easier, can someone enlighten me, and while you’re at it, take this cup from me?

One thing is for sure, it’s got me praying more than I ever have before. I feel so connected to the saints

and even a few of my ancestors, obviously Dean and I had quite the interaction a few months ago. That woman is tough. She’s tough on me too, which I need.

I know that I am never alone, and God sends me help always. We are best pals, even if I am a shitty friend, He still loves me.

I wanted to say about myself, “as a woman of deep faith” then immediately erased it, because excuse me, WHO?!

I want to be a woman of deep faith. I want to have all the peace in the world because I am so rooted in God and in church and truth and all those holy good things I want to live for.

But I am not those things. The closer I get to God, the more sinful I feel, but in a really good way, ya know?

I wish I could fix Ethan’s situation. I wish I could materialize some beautiful Montessori school with a forest playground like the one in Nashville. And the classrooms would be full of his handcrafted furniture and all the kids would thrive under his guidance. I believe so hard in his abilities, I just wish he did, too. I wish I could say I believe in the US education system, but I don’t anymore. It needs radical change immediately.

God is allowing this to happen for a reason. He is fair. And He’s always taken care of us so I am trying to remember that daily. We have been extremely blessed. This is no different than one of our grand, mountainous, honeymoon hikes. We will make it to the other side.

I think of Job. He suffered so much and he not only had all this stuff restored 10 x over, is now with God in heaven, and then made it into the Bible. Christians think of him and read his book when they are suffering greatly. I suppose that temporary pain is worth it in the end. God takes us so far, He just requires submission.

Lent is such a time of submission. I love it. It’s a cleansing time

One of my favorite poets Andrea Gibson has a poem called “Say Yes” and it’s thing that inspired today’s blog post.

This poem played recently while I was driving and once again, it’s lifted my spirits significantly, reminding me that life has a higher purpose.

I used to listen it a lot long ago when I was going through some difficult life stuff.

It played recently while I was listening to music and once again, it’s lifted my spirits, reminding me that life has a higher purpose than what we see in front of us. It's a true knock out. It goes insanely hard.

Say Yes

By Andrea Gibson

When two violins are placed in a room

if a chord on one violin is struck


the other violin will sound the note


If this is your definition of hope


This is for you


The ones who know how powerful we are


Who know we can sound the music in the people around us


simply by playing our own strings


for the ones who sing life into broken wings


open their chests and offer their breath


as wind on a still day when nothing seems to be moving


Spare those intent on proving God is dead


For you when your fingers are red


from clutching your heart


so it will beat faster


For the time you mastered the art of giving yourself for the sake of someone else


For the ones who have felt what it is to crush the lies


and lift truth so high the steeples bow to the sky


This is for you

This is also for the people who wake early to watch flowers bloom


Who notice the moon at noon on a day when the world


has slapped them in the face with its lack of light


For the mothers who feed their children first


and thirst for nothing when they’re full

This is for women


And for the men who taught me only women bleed with the moon


but there are men who cry when women bleed


men who bleed from women’s wounds


and this is for that moon


on the nights she seems hung by a noose


For the people who cut her loose


and for the people still waiting for the rope to burn


about to learn they have scissors in their hands

This is for the man who showed me


the hardest thing about having nothing


is having nothing to give


Who said the only reason to live is to give ourselves away


So this is for the day we’ll quit or jobs and work for something real


We’ll feel for sunshine in the shadows


look for sunrays in the shade

This is for the people who rattle the cage that slave wage built


and for the ones who didn’t know the filth until tonight


But right now are beginning songs that sound something like


people turning their porch lights on and calling the homeless back home

This is for all the shit we own


and for the day we’ll learn how much we have
when we learn to give that shit away


This is for doubt becoming faith


For falling from grace and climbing back up


For trading our silver platters for something that matters


like the gold that shines from our hands when we hold each other

This is for the grandmother who walked a thousand miles on broken glass


to find that single patch of grass to plant a family tree


where the fruit would grow to laugh


For the ones who know the math of war


has always been subtraction


so they live like an action of addition


For you when you give like every star is wishing on you


and for the people still wishing on stars


this is for you too

This is for the times you went through hell so someone else wouldn’t have to


For the time you taught a 14 year old girl she was powerful


This is for the time you taught a 14 year old boy he was beautiful


For the radical anarchist asking a republican to dance


cause what’s the chance of anyone moving from right to left

if the only moves they see are NBC and CBS

This is for the no becoming yes


For scars becoming breath


For saying I love you to people who will never say it to us


For scraping away the rust and remembering how to shine


For the dime you gave away when you didn’t have a penny


For the many beautiful things we do


For every song we’ve ever sung


For refusing to believe in miracles


because miracles are the impossible coming true


and everything is possible

This is for the possibility that guides us


and for the possibilities still waiting to sing


and spread their wings inside us


‘Cause tonight saturn is on his knees


proposing with all of his ten thousand rings


that whatever song we’ve been singing we sing even more


The world needs us right now more than it ever has before


Pull all your strings


Play every chord


If you’re writing letters to the prisoners 
start tearing down the bars


If you’re handing out flashlights in the dark


start handing out stars


Never go a second

hushing the percussion of your heart


Play loud


Play like you know the clouds have left too many people cold and broken


and you’re their last chance for sun


Play like there’s no time for hoping brighter days will come


Play like the apocalypse is only 4…3…2


but you have a drum in your chest that could save us


You have a song like a breath that could raise us


like the sunrise into a dark sky that cries to be blue


Play like you know we won’t survive if you don’t


but we will if you do


Play like saturn is on his knees


proposing with all of his ten thousand rings


that we give every single breath


this is for saying yes


This is for saying yes.