Read MoreMichelle Obama says, “When they go low, we go high.” My dear African American colleague reminds me that supremacy creates a false dichotomy of the choices you have in a scenario – creating false equivalencies which are rarely true.
Please take me, amor.
We dancing to bone rhyms.
Somos los mismos - lots of spice
It’s dark, now. We watch one another,
Breathe, make up, argue, laugh
pass through borders
Cultures argue for which lives count mas
You, my love,
Mi amor, I’ll be here
I’m sorry I let you down sometimes,
My country and place take dirty shots at your beautiful face.
Perdoname mi amor y yo
Tambien te perdono porque– tu eres el hombre que quiero.
You are perfecto for me because you aren’t perfect.
Mil gracias amor.
Your only,
Daniela
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Read MoreNot Buffalo, or Irvine, Uvalde, or Jayland Walker’s story will shock us enough to change. The paddles which electrify our hearts, aren’t built for centuries of hardened callouses.
A painful peeling must begin to dig at the crust which keeps us from feeling the pain of our scars and our perpetration of violence. May we find pause, this July 4th – to create intentional anti-racist communities which feel and see and hear.
May we remember Stonechild Chiefstick.
Because, his life matters.
It has been a year of recognizing deep systemic injustice, longing for change and questioning, “Who are we to be with one another? How are we to be with one another?” Advent is about waiting, gestational waiting. Who are your role models for expectant waiting to birth something long overdue?
This Advent season, perhaps it’s time to sing a new song? Let it begin with me.
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In this Advent season, I’m continuing to name my longing, inviting Jesus to come and watching for Him. Maybe He’ll arrive like a Christmas carol carried on the wind, a sweet scent in the air, or a star in the East. However He comes, I’ll be waiting and watching.
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The thought of Christmas brings me both joy and grief. Every. Single. Year. And every single year I pull out Christmas music and gravitate to “Oh Holy Night” by Mariah Carey. As a teenager, I discovered her Christmas album and had one of those ancient cassette tapes - connected to a wire - connected to my CD player. Am I even remembering that right? It was a sort-of-conversion device to play compact discs in my car. (That’s a clue to just how old I am.)
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As I sit here trying to let my flame of joy live, I wonder about this. My rational brain and therapist in me say, “Yes, we hold the tensions of this world, we hold our various emotions and experiences together.” But my body and my heart are skeptical, possibly even scared, unsure if it’s safe. Safe for what you may ask? Safe to believe God is all who She says She is and I am who She says I am. Safe to be in my body as I feel the goodness of God and not fear disappointment, death, and it ending. Safe to take up space. Safe to believe that it’s okay to find rest and relief in my joy.
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And there was evening and morning the first day. Who am I to say
That a God who bends down low
Who drinks deep,
deep of my sorrow
Never hoped for a better tomorrow?
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The dark days of winter stretch from 8 a.m. until 4 p.m. Cloudy skies force the sun to take cover. I feel alone. Slow home-school mornings compete with news feeds of election season anxiety, and air thick with virus. Although I see the faces of four eager-to-please children, I know the weight of their isolation in my chest.
Jesus, I declare, “Come.”
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Read MoreWisdom is grounded in embodied knowing, holding complexity without losing conviction. We must imagine a third way.
Cruel mysteries surround us
About a plundered earth
Where people are pillaged,
Possessions cherished,
And cravings for power, insatiable.
With certain skin shades despised
While another is idolized.
Where there are wars and walls,
Image bearers banished to cages.
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God doesn’t sleep. He doesn’t grow tired or weary. My burdens or the burdens of those I love are never too much for him.
Instead, Jesus invites us to allow him to carry all that weighs heavily on us.
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On one hand hope fuels me to meet creative deadlines, stirred by the notion that my words will fall on ears to hear and eyes to see. Hope ignites passion to sit with clients who are filled with rumblings of despair as they look over the debris of trauma in their lives. Hope gives birth to desire and longing for repaired relationships.
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2020 is covered by a dark cloud of hopelessness. A cloud that threatens to suffocate us. A cloud that shows no signs of dissipating.
This overwhelming presence of hopelessness continues to creep toward us and pound on the door to our mind, body, and soul wanting us to give up and let it come pouring in.
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A candle flickers
in the night
And the breather of breath
purses her lips
letting out
a slow and gentle
lifeline.
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When we believe the lie that our individual choices do not impact the collective, we are comforted by our despair. We assuage our anxiety and release ourselves from responsibility or action. Hopelessness is a kind of numbness that desensitizes us to our world and ourselves.
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Time flies. And the formless, empty places of my heart, are a greater part, partially because I cannot find my heart. A heart where spaces feel empty – like before they were transformed.
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How will hope hold the complexity of systems, people, polarized political parties, governments, estranged friends – faith communities divided? Is hope light enough to find goodness and heavy enough to sit in despair? Will hope provide for the hopeless without asking me or them to live in fantasy?
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Jesus stood in front of the donkey, got on it, no scars yet and they all cheered as he entered the city. I cannot watch the live feed of Facebook without wondering if I am another onlooker, or observer, cheering for the next great moment of harm in someone’s life.
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