Wednesday, July 27, 2022
Tuesday, July 26, 2022
It's summer hot here today and I'm volunteering at Kubota gardens, one of my favorite places. It's normal hot here today, unlike other parts of the country.
Pulling weeds is what I can do. Following the news is painful so I avoid it. The NYT is my source, already a week old. I read once that a man in the outback of Alaska came into town once a year for supplies and he was given the daily papers from the previous year, all the news that was a year old. He started with January one and went through each day with a year old paper. How would that be? Knowing what happened the year before, thinking about it with no recourse to fret about it (well, I suppose you could) but it was all in the past. I don't think I could read the daily paper from 2021 without breaking down. Or maybe I'd just stick to the crosswords and Wordle and what the celebrities are up to. You know, Spanks and designer clothes and the Oscars. Really important stuff.
My AC is a beautiful thing.
Well, I better go get my gardening jam on. A hat. Sunscreen. Sandals. I already have my bathing suit on for later.
Sunday, July 17, 2022
Saturday, July 16, 2022
Dear ones,
I have been working to figure out how/what the hell am I doing with chaplaincy, whatever that might be.
I have thought I'd be helping traumatized healthcare workers who have witnessed terrible things at their jobs. Where is the respite for us???
But.
As I go through this journey I have discovered that I am being pulled toward my non-human friends. All of the Earth. Her trees and frogs and birds and rocks and waterfalls and more trees. Diane and I did a hike called Lake 22 up by Granite Falls, north of Seattle.
It was spectacular. And hard. The old growth trees were the largest old growth I've even seen in the PNW. Trail ended at a snow fed alpine lake. We scrambled over rocks and sweated and ate our peanut butter sandwiches. There were so many trees, so many beautiful trees. I told Diane I wanted to do my chaplaincy right there, among those old women.
Haven't we always loved the Earth? As children we discovered the smells and sounds and creatures as we lay on our stomachs watching the most minute bugs and snails and the occasional garter snake. I would crawl under the bushes in my yard and construct tiny houses for the fairies who lived there. I climbed trees just to sit there and look out at the world.
I told my teacher that I felt loving the Earth was somehow less important than ministering to humans. She gently reminded me that we are not separate from all of life, that we are inextricably bound to Her body, fed from Her body, one day to return to her body.
Well, of course.
So how do I enter into an intimacy with the Earth herself? I know and I don't know.
She is our mother and we are all her children. How could I have forgotten?
I'm being called home. Home.
Saturday, July 09, 2022
Here I admit things I don't anywhere else. I guess I'm willing to be embarrassed in a post.
I have watched Young Royals twenty eleven thousand times. It's beautiful and heartbreaking and sexy and troubling. The acting is gorgeous. Season two can't come soon enough. Like HeartStoppers. Jeezus, adolescence. As the art teacher in HeartStoppers says, "Being a teenager is terrible."
Rachel, a buddy in my chaplaincy program texted me this:
"I'm just gonna watch teen television, work at a cemetery and pretend the world doesn't exist." My sentiments exactly, well maybe not the cemetery part (part of her volunteer hours).
I still cry so often. Am I depressed? Scared? Overwhelmed? All of it? Boris Johnson is gone and that's good.
In an hour I go pick up Diane (AKA Jolene, my preferred nickname for her as she is from the south). We'll hold hands in the car, I'll cry some more, we'll walk the dog and then we'll go to the spa for soaks and massages and Korean food in their little cafe. Then we'll come back to my house and we will just be together. I can hug her and she can hug me. We'll talk and laugh and get serious about trust and love. I don't know how to do any of this and I'm not sure I ever did. Me and the teens being all awkward and clumsy and weird as we try to figure it out.
GAWD.
For fucksake I'm OLD.
Love you all.
Friday, July 08, 2022
Wednesday, July 06, 2022
Dare I write this? December 3rd, 2022.
We're gonna get married. OMG. I know I thought I would marry someone back in 2017 and that was a HUGE mistake. And I didn't marry her. This is not a mistake. Diane; funny, talkative, quirky, thoughtful, tender, trustworthy and lovable, this person who I have loved forever. So much history, so much water under the bridge.
We needed to grow up, deal with our shit and land (in our 70's!) with our open hearts.
If we lose our constitutional right to marry, we'll be ok in Washington State. Jeezus.
Because of Roe, I'm coming out all over again. At this age, I'm invisible anyway. So I'm owning it and letting people know. This is what a queer person looks like. We're everywhere. As I have made my way through many documentaries about queers and trans folk, the damage it has done to people who can't come out or the people who do or can't hide who they are who have been shamed and shunned and beat up and killed, I have to show up for them. Maybe I posted this before but I'll keep saying this.
May we all be free from fear and hate. May we all live lives of beauty and peace.
Tonight we go dancing together. In a candle lit room with gorgeous music. Every day, every minute is precious.
Friday, July 01, 2022
Let them not say: we did not see it.
We saw.
Let them not say: we did not hear it.
We heard.
Let them not say: they did not taste it.
We ate, we trembled.
Let them not say: it was not spoken, not written.
We spoke,
we witnessed with voices and hands.
Let them not say: they did nothing.
We did not-enough.
Let them say, as they must say something:
A kerosene beauty.
It burned.
Let them say we warmed ourselves by it,
read by its light, praised,
and it burned.