Through the Looking Glass

It's hard to believe all that has changed in the 16 years since we started this blog. We have been through the looking glass and back again.

Gains and losses, life gone sideways, starting out on a smooth, newly paved street and ending up in the ditch. But...we pull together, climb out of the ditch, brush the dust from our skirts and keep moving forward.

That we do it together is the key. That we hold each others' heads above water is what's important. That we hold each other back from the abyss...

And live to laugh another day.

 

 

What calls me to the ocean?

Is it the peace borne of rhythmic waves,

Or the gems that appear as the sun meets the water?

Perhaps it's the way I am made buoyant,

able to feel my body held by the surface of greatness.

For under the ocean lie two million ancestors

Who never completed the passage.

They call to me.

They hold me.

 

Mother's Love

I drape your spirit around my shoulders to keep me warm

I button you around my heart to keep me from hurt

I feel your back to my front as you take the arrows life launches toward me

When I can't reach, I feel your levitation, lifting me as you rise

When someone speaks unreasonable bullshit, you seal my lips until I can respond

  with balance and kindness

When I run out of steam and enthusiasm, you remind me 

  that a commitment made is a commitment kept

I wait for your wisdom to grow in me, and pray that it does

I would rather laugh than hurt, even knowing there is growth in the pain

Your words are my vocabulary

I will always rest in your arms and you in mine

My dearest, dearest mother.

Forgetful Men

Forgetful Men

I am not less than you because I am a woman.

I am not less than you because I am viewed as Black, Cherokee, poor, Asian, gay, crippled or old.

I am not less than you.

You can not see all of me because I can not be contained, captured or experienced in the framework lenses of limitation, fear or bewilderment.

I am what God made me.

I am a rejoicing part of God’s plan.

I soar through hatred, fear, anger, disgrace and lies.

God made me to live surrounded by freedom, love and grace.

I float like a butterfly.

On my  journey from flower to flower

My soul invented call and response.

My soul hears and answers the call of God.

Therefore, I am accountable to God.

Therefore, I humbly and gratefully bow to God.

Men have been spewing this same make believe crap since the start;
the land of the free and home of the brave.

I am not less than you because I am a woman.

God and a Woman made a pact and carried forth Jesus to this world.

As Sojourner Truth stated,“ Man had nothing to do with him. “

Blissfully ignorant;
Ignorantly blissful.
To, with words,
make insignificant
an entire race, ethnicity, gender.
How enormous the privilege;
the capacity to simply
not
give
a
fuck.

Summer Morn in New Hampshire

 - Claude McKay, 1922

All yesterday it poured, and all night long
    I could not sleep; the rain unceasing beat
Upon the shingled roof like a weird song,
    Upon the grass like running children’s feet.
And down the mountains by the dark cloud kissed,
    Like a strange shape in filmy veiling dressed,
Slid slowly, silently, the wraith-like mist,
    And nestled soft against the earth’s wet breast.
But lo, there was a miracle at dawn!
    The still air stirred at touch of the faint breeze,
The sun a sheet of gold bequeathed the lawn,
    The songsters twittered in the rustling trees.
And all things were transfigured in the day,
    But me whom radiant beauty could not move;
For you, more wonderful, were far away,
    And I was blind with hunger for your love.

Screw the Wrapper: the Inside's Still Rotten

Once again I find myself in a room full of professional peers smugly blowing smoke about their accomplishments.   As we discuss the absence of black males in the entering medical school class, my boss says "So, I saw that the black males in the class are largely first generation.  Are they from the Caribbean?" I responded, "And Nigeria and Ghana."  Why is that, he asks?  I say that it's cultural and that their parents tend to keep a tighter rein on the kids, making them a bit less susceptible to the distractions that capture our domestic kids.  I followed by saying that the community notices when meeting our students en masse, and invariably someone will ask, "where is the kid from Homewood?"

 

What does my boss say to me?  What does he say aloud in front of the group?   "The kid from Homewood is in jail."

 

I managed to reply, "Perhaps we can work to help stem the tide." I almost burst into tears right there.  At that moment I felt so sad and so deflated by how quickly and casually that sentiment was conveyed, and overwhelmed by the enormity of what we're trying to do.  We're trying to nurture a generation of young people so they don't end up as incarceration statistics.   To so flippantly toss off that "the kid from Homewood is in jail,"  was so insensitive, so damaging.  My FAMILY is in Homewood.  When the majority folk get done using me, at the end of the day, I know that there are people in Homewood who would go to the mat for me and mine.  They may not be educated, they may not always play by the rules and they may not always make good decisions (traumatized people rarely do), but they don't pretend to be what they are not.  They don't pretend to care about what happens to our community, only to throw the community under the bus when it looks like there's a dollar to be made.

 

I can't get anyone to invest time and effort in a Nursing Exploring post that might give the kid from Homewood an idea of what else s/he might do in life, but our faculty are running back and forth to and from China like they're going to Shadyside.  They'll bring students here from the country with the worst human rights record on the planet...because it pays.

 

Believe me, if it would put a dime in the pocket of any of these people, the kid from Homewood would get a stellar education, a mentor and a chance at a career through which s/he could cure individuals and our communities.  Until then, the kid from Homewood is a punchline.

 

Thanks...thanks a lot.