​We need to be held and to hold by debgrant
 
I was sent a video link one night
recently as I couldn't sleep and
scrolled through the
headlines on my phone.
 
The link was to a video.
It was a song.
The music was gentle.
The lyrics were simple.
The singer was tender.
The song repeated itself inside me 
somewhere inside my chest cavity
that spot that sometimes tells me
that it's hungry.
 
The refrain is
"I am sending you light
to heal you, to hold you.
I am sending you light
to hold you in love."
 
The need to be held
can be enormous.
It can be the surprising
flutter of fingers 
across our shoulders
or on our forearms.
But now,
our touch can be 
a trojan horse -
a gift carrying an
intruder.
The risk of causing
suffering is real. 
 
We need new ways 
of holding one another
even when it is
beyond arm's reach.
Even when it is 
"not our thing." 
 
Learn to touch 
with a song
or hold with a word
or hug with a handwritten card
or voice in a prayer
or refrigerator art.
Learn how to send light
to those sitting deeply
alone scrolling through
their phone
at night. 
 
####
Here is the video link in case you need it as much as I do:  
https://youtu.be/cIsZuoNFtXg

​On the Edge of Tears by debgrant
 
Living on the edge of tears.
The burning.
The welling.
The thickness around the throat.
The fear of the tears.
The blink back.
What good will it do?
Venting.
Purging.
A personal spillway 
to prevent the dam from 
breaking completely.
Perhaps. 
 
A family vacation to 
Niagara Falls took me to an edge.
A tunnel dug below the falls
to let the tourists stand in 
ill-fitting raincoats and galoshes
reducing us all to children 
giving us all the chance
to approach a wall of wet thunder,
to hear the roar, to feel the spray,
to touch the liquid rage.  
if we dare. 
I reached out. I felt the power of 
it through my face. 
I pulled back my hand lest it
grab me by the wrist 
and kidnap me like a stranger
who feels nothing and
pounds on a river bedrocks
day and night. 
 
Living on the edge of tears
Holding them back is not all bad.
In the space between reaching out
to the deluge and leaning away,
we discover a new muscle
and our own voice.
We want to live. 
We want to hope. 
Perhaps it is not always a bad thing
to hold back tears.
Perhaps it is our silent way of saying
I will choose the time for tears.
Not today. 
I will not add my tears today
to the waterfall. 
I don't want to be someone else's 
stranger grabbing them by the wrist.
Living on the edge of tears
maybe an act of courage
and hope.
 
###

Motion Sick by debgrant
 
I traveled for weeks on a freighter
with a Filipino crew.
Through the bits of 
shared language,
they offered what they knew.
Eat.
Keep your stomach full.
Counter-intuitive when
you are retching from 
the constant motion. 
Not exotic spices, mind you.
Or greasy sauce. 
Basic sustenance.
Bread or rice or fish.
Solid and good.
Don't seek solid ground.
You will not find it 
Even on a 900-foot container ship.
Even its massiveness steel 
heaves with a wave.
It pitches and rolls
and makes its way
slowly.
But it makes its way.
Remember where you are.
You are not on solid ground.
Shutting your eyes will make it worse.
YOU are not solid ground.
Your companions are not solid ground.
You are with them in the tempest.
You are with them in the motion.
 
Right now,
this pitching planet is where we are.
We are all more than a little motion sick.
We are retching.
We are grabbing for handholds
But they are not still. 
We are all more than a little motion sick.
We want it to stop.
We will die to make it stop.
Eat. 
Says the voice of pure kindness.
Remember where you are.
We are on a moving ship.
Our solid ground, our common ground
is that we are constantly in motion.
The truth will set us free. 
Shutting our eyes will make it worse.
When we retch a little less,
we will learn how to
crew this ship
together. 
 
### ​

​Common Sense  by debgrant
 
This has been a season 
of an assault 
on our senses. 
 
The virus if it doesn't kill you
steals your sense of taste
and smell. 
 
The distancing is necessary
but stifles our sense of
touch. 
 
The mask is necessary
but stifles our ability
to see a smile or 
a sneer or hear
well. 
 
So some choose freedom 
of their senses over
common sense and 
everyone loses. 
 
Patience is not our 
strength and yet,
if we are patient
our senses grow 
to accommodate our 
circumstance. 
 
It is the essence of 
our humanity
to taste the gifts of clean earth and air,
to smell danger and deliciousness,
to listen more deeply,
to see with the eyes of our hearts
to touch in magical ways.
 
Please be patient
A while longer
until our senses 
catch up with us. 
 
####

​What I learned this week by debgrant
 
I call this "Spirit-guided internet surfing."  It happens.  It shouldn't surprise me that the Spirit appears in places that seem so....seemy.  And yet, there She is poking me to the holy places. 
 
I was drawn to the colors and patterns of the cloth worn as scarves by African Americans. 
I learned one type of cloth is called kente
I learned it has different colors and pattern variations.
I thought I might use it in some of my art.
I thought I might want to buy some cloth or
at least, a t-shirt. 
That immediately felt wrong.  
Typical thing for a white person to do. 
Claim something for myself that doesn't belong to me. 
I started surfing kente.
I learned that the patterns and the symbols have meaning.
I saw one symbol called SANKOFA that looked similar to one of my drawings.
I thought I could copy its pattern.  Include it and be cool. Contemporary. 
The Spirit nudged me to go deeper. To learn the meaning of SANKOFA.
I learned the name means: 
 
San= to return           ko= to go          fa= to look, to seek and take
 
The sankofa bird has saught its past trail to take back what was lost, in order to protect its future!
 
One site states: Sankofa literally means to go back and get what was taken. After the term made its way to the United States, African-American scholars coin the term to mean “remembering our past, to protect our future” within the African-American culture.
I learned this was not mine to take.
This was given to me as a gift.
The gift was what it continues to teach me
about what it means to listen more deeply,
to respect more thoughtfully, 
about myself, 
the country I called home,
 
###

​In T.H.White's book, "Once and Future King" there is a moment when the boy who would become King Arthur is talking with his mentor Merlyn.  The boy asked what to do with sadness. The reply is one I have carried in my soul and returned to it especially when I am sad.  And I am overwhelmingly sad. 
 
“The best thing for being sad,’ replied Merlyn, beginning to puff and blow, ‘is to learn something. That is the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then – to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags in it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting."
 
Charlie Brown, the Peanuts character once said, "The more I learn, the more I learn how much there is to learn." That quote sits in my art studio. 
 
Confucius said, "Wise is a man and bound to grow who knows he knows a thing or so but who is not afraid to show the many things he doesn't know." I memorized that poem as a child. I never forgot it. 
 
I have learned that I really don't like being sad. Learning is work. Real work. It requires humility to ask questions, to be curious, to seek truth.  Sadness happens when we discover that we don't know it all and it's not good enough to stay that way. My prayer for you today is that you learn something.  
It's my prayer for myself today too. 

​Memorial Day 2020 by debgrant
 
This is the day my father
would recite from memory
the poem about the poppies
growing row on row. 
A car accident put him in a hospital
for five years.
He was admitted as a teenager
and left a broken, wiser man.
He spent the years reading.
He memorized poetry.
He worked in the Springfield Armory
during WWII
because his broken body could not enlist.
His mind remembered the poetry.
His heart recited it to his children.
What he did for the war effort 
was to build weapons for the soldiers.
What he did for all who fought and died
was to remember them.
Remember them
who were now at peace
Beneath the poppies row on row
beyond the war.
What he did was teach his children
the tender act
of remembering.
He taught his children
this day is not about freedom
or flag or beating our chests
for the freedom
to infect our one another with 
thoughtlessness.
This is a day to feel 
the brokenness in our nation's bones,
to mourn lost souls,
to listen to voices of those who fought
on varied fronts and died
and remember who we are. 
###  

​This is a quote of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's from Letters and Papers from Prison.  I often find myself returning to it for its tenderness and wisdom.
 
"I should like to say something to help you in the time of separation that lies ahead.  There is no need to say how hard any such separation is for us; but as I've now been separated for nine months from all the people that I'm devoted to, I should like to pass on to you something of what I have learnt.
 
First: nothing can make up for the absence of someone whom we love, and it would be wrong to try to find a substitute; we must simply hold out and see it through.  That sounds very hard at first, but at the same time it is a great consolation, for the gap, as long as it remains unfilled, preserves the bonds between us.  It is nonsense to say that God fills the gap; he doesn't fill it, but on the contrary, he keeps it empty and so helps us to keep alive our former communion with each other, even at the cost of pain.
 
Secondly: the dearer and richer our memories, the more difficult the separation.  But gratitude changes the pangs of memory into a tranquil joy.  The beauties of the past are borne, not as a thorn in the flesh, but as a precious gift in themselves.  We must take care not to wallow in our memories or hand ourselves over to them, just as we do not gaze all the time at a valuable present, but only at special times, and apart from these keep it simply as a hidden treasure that is our for certain.  In this way the past gives us lasting joy and strength.
 
Thirdly: time of separation are not a total loss or unprofitable for our companionship, or at any rate they need not be so.  In spite of all the difficulties that they bring, they can be the means of strengthening fellowship quite remarkably.
 
Fourthly: I've learnt here especially that the facts can always be mastered, and that difficulties are magnified out of all proportion simply by fear and anxiety.  From the moment we wake until we fall asleep we must commend other people wholly and unreservedly to God and leave them in his hands, and transform our anxiety for them into prayers on their behalf:
 
With sorrow and with grief . . .
God will not be distracted."   - Dietrich Bonhoeffer