Migrating

Loves, I've shifted over to WordPress now, so this site will serve as an archive (there's good stuff here, look around!).  New content will be at Towanda's Window and/or FierceRev Remedies.

Enjoy!

Introduction

 

Friends, I'm really proud to introduce to you my new website, FierceRev Remedies, where I'll be writing about herbalism, freedom movement work, and where those intersect for me.  This is an outgrowth of my vocational journey these last couple of years, including herbal studies, deepening pastoral justice work, farmwork, vocational discernment, and the project of healing and reclaiming my voice.

My first post is about my first herbal love.

I’ve been drinking herbal  infusion teas almost every day since then, and have felt the herbs’ slow, deep, transformational work in my being.  But Rose was the first, the first to teach me that the herbs so want to help us heal, help us be fierce for the work of liberation, help us love on this earth and its creatures and each other.  Rose was the first who made me feel I might be a healer, along with being a pastor and an activist.

Towanda's Window isn't going anywhere!  (Although I may shift it to WordPress because Blogger is getting annoying). I'll still post more personal reflections (and white shirt fangirling!) here.

Maybe I'll write more about this sometime, but I went through a time where somebody worked *really* hard to silence my voice.  That person almost succeeded.  You can see that reflected in this blog by how my personal writing goes from fairly prolific to veryvery quiet, almost non-existent, as this person influenced my life (you can see that same prolific/outspoken to silent pattern in my personal Facebook posts as well).  Maybe you noticed, if you've been reading here a long time. 

Long story short:  thank God I walked away from that!  I'm so thankful for my cielo, my friends, my church, my healers, all of whom have walked through this with me and loved on me hard.  The journey to healing has been deep, and long, at least long as it feels to me, which I guess what I want to really say is that you don't just recover from that, heal from that overnight.  I've gradually come to write more here -- that tri-partite Carol posting was a huge step! -- and now this new website feels enormous and important as I continue to heal.

I have stuff to say, y'all.  And there is stuff that wants to be said through me.  So, thanks for being here, and I hope you'll join me at my other hangout too.  Peace.

A New Post, On a New Site

I'm excited to share that I'm now a contributor at a new blog being published by the UCC called New Sacred.  Here is an excerpt from my very first post:

The Jennings family is Black. As they tend the soil, two white men walk right through their front yard and into the garden, and begin to talk to Mary about their church.

They never ask anything about her, but plow through their rehearsed missionizing speech until his mother interrupts that she is already a Christian, a “pillar,” Jennings notes, of her church with a faith “as unfathomable as the blindness of these men to our Christian lives.”

The Jennings family lived but 200 yards from the white men’s church, and Willie regularly played basketball on the court in the church parking lot.

(There’s no way I can do justice to how Jennings tells this story. Please find this book and read it for yourself!)

Then, Jennings asks the question that has haunted me as a white woman ever since I first read it in December of 2012, in the aftermath of Trayvon Martin’s murder: “Why did they not know us? They should have known us very well.”

“Why did they not know us?”

Read more here --

A #BlackLivesMatter Silent Night

Psalm

Psalm

by Harvey Shapiro

I am still on a rooftop in Brooklyn
on your holy day. The harbor is before me,
Governor's Island, the Verrazano Bridge
and the Narrows. I keep in my head
what Rabbi Nachman said about the world
being a narrow bridge and that the important thing
is not to be afraid. So on this day
I bless my mother and father, that they be
not fearful where they wander. And I
ask you to bless them and before you
close your Book of Life, your Sefer Hachayim,
remember that I always praised your world
and your splendor and that my tongue
tried to say your name on Court Street in Brooklyn.
Take me safely through the Narrows to the sea.


"Psalm" by Harvey Shapiro, from A Momentary Glory. © Wesleyan Press, 2014. Reprinted with permission.

The Perfect Poem for Me

You'll see why.

A Hundred Years from Now
by David Shumate

 I'm sorry I won't be around a hundred years from now. I'd like to
see how it all turns out. What language most of you are speaking.
What country is swaggering across the globe. I'm curious to know
if your medicines cure what ails us now. And how intelligent your
children are as they parachute down through the womb. Have
you invented new vegetables? Have you trained spiders to do your
bidding? Have baseball and opera merged into one melodic sport?
A hundred years....My grandfather lived almost that long. The
doctor who came to the farmhouse to deliver him arrived in a
horse-drawn carriage. Do you still have horses?

"A Hundred Years from Now" by David Shumate from Kimonos in the Closet. © University of Pittsburg Press, 2013.

Turn Me Into Song

This is what was bequeathed us:
This earth the beloved left
And, leaving,
Left to us.

 

No other world
But this one:
Willows and the river
And the factory
With its black smokestacks.

 

No other shore, only this bank
On which the living gather.

 

No meaning but what we find here.
No purpose but what we make.

 

That, and the beloved’s clear instructions:
Turn me into song; sing me awake.

 

~ Gregory Orr ~

 

(How Beautiful the Beloved)

Thought For The Day

"People who go about seeking to change the world, to diminish suffering, to demonstrate any kind of enlightenment, are often as flawed as anybody else. Sometimes more so. But it is the awareness of having faults, I think, and the knowledge that this links us to everyone on Earth, that opens us to courage and compassion. It occurs to me often that many of those I deeply love are flawed. They might actually have said or done some of the mean things I’ve felt, heard, read about, or feared. But it is their struggle with the flaw, surprisingly endearing, and the going on anyhow, that is part of what I cherish in them."

Alice Walker

Mad Love

The madness of love
is a blessed fate;
and if we understood this
we would seek no other:
it brings into unity
what was divided,
and this is the truth:
bitterness it makes sweet,
it makes the stranger a neighbor,
and what was lowly it raises on high.

 Mystic Hadewijch of Antwerp

Oh Hai! I'm Still Here!

I know, my postings for a long stretch now have been few and far between.  Some of it is just due to a full life.  Anyway, I ran across this "Gramilano Questionairre" that Joyce DiDonato responded to, and I thought it would be fun to answer the same questions.  Now Joyce (who, by the way, I adore) and I have something in common, haha! You can see if we have more in common by reading my responses below, a rather long post to make up for not posting for a while.

So here it goes:

When Did You Start Singing?

Have I told this story?  My first memory is of singing the refrain of "Angels We Have Heard on High" not long after I had an emergency tracheotomy when I was about 2 and a half.  It happened right before Christmas, hence the carol I suppose!  I was alone in the room so there is no way it can be anything other than my memory:  singing the "gloooooooooooooooo-ri-a" and feeling the air whistle through the still-healing hole in my throat.  I assume I actually started singing earlier than that of course, but I really love that this is my first memory.

Why Did You Start Singing?
Well as the story above suggests, I don't recall.  I suppose I started singing because I was sung to by my very musical parents.  I know they sung to me and made up words to lullabies and other songs for me (and my brothers later).

Which Singer Most Inspired You When You Were Young?
Beverly Sills.  I remember seeing her on TV in "Daughter of the Regiment" when I was no older than 8.  For my 9th Birthday my mom took me to see the Met on tour in Dallas; we wanted to see her in "Don Pasquale" but the tickets were sold out; I cried.  Still, we got to see "Tosca" (which I fell in love with...and which starred Pavarotti which meant little to me at the time) and "Tannhauser" (which I mostly slept through).  A few year later, I discovered Leontyne Price on my parents' recording of "Tosca," and Kiri Te Kanawa. 

Which Singer Do You Most Admire?
Well if you pay attention here you know I love Renee Fleming.  In the operatic world also Leontyne Price and Joyce DiDonato.  All because of how they talk about their art and really seem to committed to being real human beings.

In other musical worlds I love the Indigo Girls not only because their music saves me (repeatedly) but also their commitment to justice.

What's Your Favorite Role?
So since I'm not an opera singer I'll answer with the characters I find most interesting and keep wanting to explore, like The Marschallin, or Tosca, or Maria Stuarda (thanks to JDD's brilliant interpretation).  I also cannot stop thinking about Jonas Kauffman's Parsifal at the Met this year, though I am not sure if that is just the character or the whole work itself (including the production) that continues to haunt me.

What role have you never played but would have liked to?
(I love Joyce's answer to this!)  Well obviously I have not ever played any, so I guess the choice is wide open.  Off the top of my head, I'd say Tosca, and Octavian.

 

What's Your Favorite Opera to Watch?
I will always go see Tosca, Rosenkavalier, the Ring, and Parsifal if I can (I can't always, but that's a different question).  Or anything with Fleming, DiDonato, Susan Graham, or Kauffman.

Who Is Your Favorite Composer?
I can only choose one?  Surely not.  It kind of depends on my mood anyway.  These days, I have been listening to Beethoven symphonies, Wagner's "Wintersturmme" to the end of Die Walkure Act 1 (Kaufmann and Westbroek from the Met...I know, totally random, it puzzles even me) and Vaughn Williams' "The Lark Ascending."  (Interspersed with Indigo Girls, Pink, and Patti Griffin).

Who Is Your Favorite Writer?
Well I have all of Barbara Kingsolver's books on my shelves, so that is a good guess.  Dorothy Sayers, Mary Oliver, Toni Morrison...

Who Is Your Favorite Theater or Film Director?
Well, Francois Girard was the director of the Met's Parsifal this year, and I can't stop thinking about it, so maybe that would be one.  Otherwise, Alfred Hitchcock.

Who Is Your Favorite Actor?
Meryl Streep.

Who Is Your Favorite Dancer?
I don't really follow dance so I can't say.

What Is Your Favorite Book?
This is like the "favorite composer" question!  One would be Dorothy Sayers' "Gaudy Night."

What Is Your Favorite Film?
"Fried Green Tomatoes" and "Rear Window."

Though currently this is making me very giggly:



I do have quite the silly side, really.

Which Is Your Favorite City?
Antigua, Guatemala.  Also getting pretty fond of Denver.

What Do You Like Most About Yourself?
I put my wicked smarts in service of making the world a better place.

What Do You Dislike About Yourself?
When I don't tend to my fears which leads to overworking to compensate which leads to um let's just call it grumpiness.

What Was Your Proudest Moment?
This is not a moment per se, but all the hard work I have done on myself, both in terms of personal healing and growth as well as what my commitment to justice looks like in the world, in the aftermath of this moment, which broke me apart in just about every way possible and so much of it (almost all of it really) unforeseen that day.

When and Where Were You Happiest?
I am pretty darned happy right now, and full of gratitude for that.

What or Who Is The Greatest Love of Your Life?
My cielo, above all else but the baffling romance with the Divine.

What Is Your Greatest Fear?
Disappearing or having no signifance.

If You Could Change One Thing About Yourself, What Would It Be?
Actually I am pretty happy with me.  Not that I don't have stuff to tend to but I am tending to it, and growing as a result, so you know, I'm happy actually.

Here's a poem by Anne Sexton:

There is joy
in all:
in the hair I brush each morning,
in the Cannon towel, newly washed,
that I rub my body with each morning,
in the chapel of eggs I cook
each morning,
in the outcry from the kettle
that heats my coffee
each morning,
in the spoon and the chair
that cry "hello there, Anne"
each morning,
in the godhead of the table
that I set my silver, plate, cup upon
each morning.

All this is God,
right here in my pea-green house
each morning
and I mean,
though often forget,
to give thanks,
to faint down by the kitchen table
in a prayer of rejoicing
as the holy birds at the kitchen window
peck into their marriage of seeds.

So while I think of it,
let me paint a thank-you on my palm
for this God, this laughter of the morning,
lest it go unspoken.

The Joy that isn't shared, I've heard,
dies young. 

Yeah, that.

What Do You Consider Your Greatest Achievement?
Hmm.  That I live a life that feels authentic to me.

What Is Your Most Treasured Possession?
My Raggedy Ann, and my worn copy of T. S. Eliot's "Four Quartets."

I should also add my car, the faithful Towanda, nearly 21 years old and just having past 200,000 miles.  She has gotten me everywhere I have needed to go.

What Is Your Greatest Extravagance?
Taking myself to the opera.  And books. And music.

What Do You Consider the Most Overrated Virtue?
Success as defined in capitalistic terms.

On What Occasion Do You Lie?
Joyce says, "I have lied when I mis­takenly think it will make the other per­son feel better." I have done that and it never works, so I am working on honesty instead; even though it's lots harder, it's better in the long run.

I will, however, protect the truth when necessary in situations of injustice.

If You Hadn't Been A Singer, What Would You Have Liked To Be?
Well I am NOT a singer, but what is funny that if I weren't what I am *now* (the Fierce Good Reverend of the Revolution), I think I would want to be a singer (the 3rd Indigo Girl, I always say). So there!

What Is Your Most Marked Characteristic?
Loyalty.

What Quality Do You Most Value in a Friend?
Honesty, tenderness, forgiveness, humor (a way of saying, I value a friend who is ok with me being fully human...and is ok with being fully human with me).

What Quality Do You Most Value in a Colleague?
Commitment. And honesty.

Which Historical Figure Do You Most Admire?
Pretty much anyone who has stepped out of their place in order to do the good blessed work of justice, whether well known like Ella Baker, MLK, or Anne Braden, or on the daily practical level like many of the folks I work with.

Which Living Person Do You Most Admire?
See previous answer.

What Do You Most Dislike?
WhiteSupremacist-Capitalist-HeteroPatriarchy. 

What Talent Would You Most Like To Have?
Hitting a fastball a long way.

What's Your Idea of Perfect Happiness?
When I am present enough that I can recognize the in-breaking of "perfect happiness." For me it is not just one thing (though chocolate comes close).

How Would You Like to Die?
After a good, long life, surrounded by people I love and music.

What Is Your Motto?
"My only occupation:  Love."  St. John of the Cross

 
 

Thinking of Lena Horne

For some reason an obit for Lena Horne popped up on my Facebook feed today.  So I was reminded of this.  My favorite.  Such tenderness.

Intense

I just listened to the Met radio broadcast of Dialogues of the Carmelites and I have to say:  WHOA.  Look, I know how it ends.  I have seen it live (with a friend as one of the sisters).  But listening to the final scene, with no visual cues, was its own kind of terrifying.  Perhaps because I do not know the piece well (having only seen/heard it that once), not knowing when the guillotine slices are coming was just...well I gasped aloud every time and my cielo became worried. The first time, I actually jumped I was so startled.  Poulenc was a genius for sure.  I am still shaking and it has been over now about half an hour!

Here is the final scene, from an earlier performance (in the 80s) of this same production.  Close your eyes and just listen.

Blessed Easter

Seen

A Blessing for Easter Sunday

You had not imagined

that something so empty

could fill you
to overflowing

and now you carry
the knowledge
like an awful treasure,
or like a child
that roots itself
beneath your heart:

how the emptiness
will bear forth
a new world
that you cannot fathom
but on whose edge
you stand.

So why do you linger?
You have seen
and so you are
already blessed.
You have been seen
and so you are
the blessing.

There is no other word
you need.
There is simply
to go
and tell.
There is simply
to begin.

Jan Richardson 

A Night at the Opera

Enjoying Romeo and Juliet at Opera Colorado opening night.  And those are Jenny Lind's opera glasses! Courtesy of the church memeber who invited us. Pretty cool! 

Remembering, Ain't That Good News

Preach it, Dr. Reagon.

"I'm gonna lay down this world, I'm gonna shoulder up my cross...ain't that good news!"

"To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away.
And never, never, to forget. "

- Arundhati Roy

I find it hard to believe that it has been five years, today, this day, Saturday October 6, 2007, since the columbus day parade protest.  Some of you have been reading here long enough to remember my first post of many about that day and all that came after, "Trying to Live the Life I Talk About."

I find it hard to believe it has been five years, because that day, the whole experience, from the street and arrest to the trials that followed over the next many months, my trial...all of it still seems as close to me as my skin.  As present to me as my own feet.  As pressing to me as the ache I still carry in my wrists, my arms, my shoulders...Yes, each day I remember, and that day comes to mind, a touchstone now for all the work I do, the one with the collar who remembers the pain and strength and LOVE, yes, the love, with each step I take in the street standing for justice, with every raising of my voice for justice, with every prayer and liturgy and breaking of bread and holding of the blessed people who I pastor.  

Oh my god, such beautiful people who I am blessed to pastor, in the street and around the table.

I remember this anniversary each year.  This date, in the last few years, has marked a descent into layers of despair, remembering only the pain of that day.  The worst being last year, when at last, I completely broke down, and stopped everything for two months -- Advent, Christmas, Epiphany -- rejoining my work, my blessed vocation, at the birth of spring, St. Brigid's day.  

Yes, I still carry the pain of that day, the ache of damaged nerves and muscles and tendons, the ache of watching friends (and friends-to-be) be violated, in my body; the pain of that day, the persistent violence of the trials in my body and soul.  I will never forget.

Still...today I find myself in a place of gratitude.  Yes, I carry the pain, but it no longer has its hardened stiff fingers clutched around my heart and lungs.  Yes, I broke down, and I also broke open, broke apart, broke wide, and I found myself anticipating this day, the small rituals I created for myself for this day, the blessings and prayers of friends offered, the time set aside to write this reflection.

This is new...to come to this place, this day, not with fear, but with honor for the pain and gratitude for all that has come from that day.  Gratitude is where I place myself this day.

• I have paused in writing to re-read all my posts from that time, from the first one above through my trial and graduation.  I place myself  in gratitude for all the people and all the care and am in awe of the good sermons I preached -- this one is still my favorite -- and poetry I wrote.

• From the place I stand now, I can see the cracks in the hopefullness I held on to during that time.  I am grateful for both the hope, which I have found my way back to, but differently, and the cracks, which eventually split jagged across my my being, setting me free.

• I was up at the farm this week, hugging Arlo and helping out with chores.  I realized suddenly that because my dear friend BlueEyes was so determined to provide me anything I asked for in terms of self-care over those months, I got to meet Arlo when he was a newborn, thus beginning a beautiful friendship.  Goat mama Lori and talked about how we would have met eventually, but if it hadn't been for the arrest et. al., I would not have met Arlo in this way, and perhaps my bond with him, and Lori, and the farm, would be quite different.  Tending the goats has become a respite and healing place for me, and I am grateful.

• As I have been getting ready for this anniversary, I began to realize that each descent into despair each fall has also brought with it -- eventually, sometimes with tears and struggle, sometimes with ecstastic experiences of Divine love -- growth and healing and wholeness and now a more fully incarnated me, a more fully human me.  My retreats at Nada each year after Easter have been crucial to this, and the Spirit's urging to go there the first time in 2009 grew right out of my struggle to make sense of what had happened to me.

• I think there is something to be said of my insistence on making meaning out of this experience, wrestling blessing after blessing after blessing out of it, refusing to only sit in pain and despair (even when I that was all I knew), seeking healing of heart and body and soul.  This insistence is itself a form of resistance!

• The experience of the arrest and trials broke my hope.  Broke my imagination.  But that is not the end of the story -- not the end of the story!  Resurrection happens, quietly, a small green stem easing its way out of the bulb, and my hope is rooted now in Her, my imagination rooted now in Her imagining, and when I am in the street embodying true community, around the table embodying true community, my hope and my imagination are grounded in Her love.  Anger yes, and also fierce love.  Hope and imagination informed by the violence, the pain, and even the despair.  Never forgotten, never.  Hope and hopelessness go hand in hand...this is crucial to know, in my body.

• I have had experiences, since rejoining my vocation this spring, of overwhelming love.  Of standing in front of the immigrant detention center with beautiful young adults, undocumented, shouting for their lives, and feeling waves of love for them and knowing, out of that love I will lay my body down for you -- right here, if the cops move in, if ICE moves in, they will have to go through me first.  Of standing around the table baptizing sweet little Lucky boy, who no one thought possible, pouring that water over and over and over his sweet little head, how much love can a body hold for this sweet little blessed boy?  Of jumping up and down in the street, just this week, just outside the debate fences, with brilliant, beautiful folk who are immigrants, documented and otherwise, and feeling my shouting and my jumping coming from joy, from love, love for these beautiful, beautiful, oh my god how beautiful people.

This is what broke in me -- and I did not have words for this, in many ways, to write here about it, but today, now, I speak of this -- this is what broke in me:  

The hardened stiff resin of untempered anger,
hardened stiff resin of unshed repressed tears,
solid bound shame around my heart my lungs.

NOW
cracked open, split open, shattered open,
open open open,
hardness replaced with pinkened fire,
gentlefierce, steadfast, loved, protected.

I just realized:  In many ways the fierce good reverend of the revolution was born that day, 5 years ago today.  I am filled with gratitude for everything.  Oh Divine One, Beloved One, I am filled with gratitude for everything.  I move into the restful darkness of fall and winter without fear.