Tag: Redemption

Dust Mite

Rita Sommers-FlanaganLeave a comment

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Sometimes, my co-author pushes things a little further than seems appropriate and leaves me dangling. For instance, this morning I’ve had to gulp back my aversion and hide my incredulity while  I try to model polite acceptance. “Hello, God,” I said. “I see you’ve become a dust mite.”

No discernible answer. I try a little ingratiation. “Wow. You’re so tiny and translucent.” But I’m thinking UGLY! Of course, I realize beauty’s in the biased eye of the beholder. I continue on. “And bugs like you are impossible to eradicate.”

Without a word, God infiltrates my psyche and I drop a little deeper. Humans can dip very low. God can dip lower.

“God, you freak me out. You’ve taken up residence in the detritus of humankind, yet you remain essential and good. You’re living where we’ve been, transforming what’s fallen from our bodies into sustenance. You restore meaning to things that have been cast off and forgotten. You complete the circle. You’re like a mother clasping the old sweaty shirt of her child to her heart, weeping for all that has been, all that could have been. Taking courage from the scent remaining in the shredded cloth. You fearlessly find the way forward. Onward.” Still no answer, but I think God is in agreement.

“I’m like that today too, God,” I say, longing for some kind of affiliation.

I’m sitting beside my expanding rock collection–stones that were once fallen trees, transformed by minerals in the ancient putrid waters that sucked them down. I can’t fathom the pressure necessary to create these stones. And how is it they’ve come to be here, on my bench, in my house, absorbing the warmth of the morning sun?

Judging from the way things break down and are reconfigured, my place in this cacophony of life and death is a whimsical bit of happenstance. This upsets me a little bit.

“Sometimes, I wish you took me a little more seriously, Dust mite God,” I said. Of course, no answer.  “Okay, sometimes I wish you didn’t pay any attention to me at all. You’re a frightening, infinitesimal speck of persistence, patiently digesting, creating and re-creating this ragged world and all that is within it.” No comment. No reaction. I stumble on.

“Diminutive God, you’re nearly invisible to the naked eye.  I don’t know what to make of you. Why have you chosen to inhabit such a tiny space.?”

Finally, I realize there will be no reasonable answers. In fact, there will be no answers at all today. Only compassion. Only resurrection. Only the icy hope of rising water, the magical appearance of red-winged blackbirds, the ambivalent green of an ordinary day.

In this version of myself, I am the friend of dust mites, the builder who will not reject these temporary stones. I am a transitory being of ashes and dust, improvising the best I can with the materials at hand. I won’t get it entirely right. No one ever does. And it doesn’t matter in the least.

 

Brown God, White Bread

Rita Sommers-Flanagan7 Comments

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Dear Brown God,

I ate white bread for you today. Yes, I did. I swallowed my aversion, draped a delicate veil of righteousness over my shoulders, and let the elements slide down my throat.

I did this without expectation. Frankly, it was mostly for show. But suddenly, there you were, sidling my direction. I shook my head, signaling you should leave me alone. My face said, “Do not sit anywhere near me.” You ignored my face.

We sat in uncomfortable silence on the back bench. When the time came for confession of sins, I scratched you a note, “Do not expect much from me. I’m white like the bread, inside and out.” But I didn’t have the courage to slide it over. We stared straight ahead. I felt myself starting to come apart. Like a shy lover, you gently took my hand, entwining our fingers one by one. No one noticed this merger, this complete dissolution of boundary and intent. In what was left of my center, a longing welled up to be poor, and brown, and hungry. To be courageous, worthy, alive. There, amongst acquaintances, I was a refugee—landless, homeless, stripped of my claims to humanity. Then I was a snowy owl, a field of lilies, a night, blackened by the turning of the earth, given a small reprieve by galaxies that refuse to be silenced.

A ragtag choir rushed to the front and began to sing the haunting plea, Dona Nobis Pachem. They were joined by the Gay Men’s Choir from San Francisco, and then by what appeared to be German children, mostly blond, and an orchestra, complete with a massive section of violins. They played. They sang. They begged for peace. You and I, God. You and I. We drank the music in like water. We sang until we dissolved, flowing in harmony toward the rising sea. All that remained was a little smear of hope on the new carpet. It glowed iridescent beneath the worn boots of those who will always stay faithfully behind.

And now, back in my tentative body, a howling wind is blowing me sideways. The evening is falling hard. I’m writing you this note to say I’m sorry. No matter how many times you stop by and remind me to be brave, and to eat with joy, I’m still a bit selfish and afraid.

Dona Nobis Pachem, Brown God. And rest well. Tomorrow will be another day.

Yours,

Rita

Longevity

Rita Sommers-Flanagan6 Comments

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Out the southern window, eleven Canadian Geese sliced silently through the sky in a straight dark line. But it only looks straight. It’s curved like the earth, curved like all who dwell herein. An orange school bus glides along the distant road, carrying tired values and outdated ideas back and forth while unruly children bounce on the cracked leather seats. I’ve ridden that bus all my life. The back window rattles loose and I occasionally escape, but I don’t get far.

To mark the path home, I’ve rolled large stones into a curved line, and stacked smaller ones on the rounded tops, held in place by gravity, spit, and Zen. When the wind howls through the valley, some of them tumble off. These are local river rocks, but I drag stones home from wherever I go. Alleys, beaches, roadways, mountains, even other continents.

Decades ago, I rescued a collection of agates that had been buried by debris in the back yard of an old Forest Service office. I imagined the collector, likely now dead, watching from beyond. I wash them occasionally, and put them in new buckets, but at some point, I’ll do something more fitting, more spectacular with them. They seem content to wait. If anything can grasp the term geologic time, it would be rocks. When I was a child, I thought trees lived forever. Now I know they don’t, and I’m glad. I’m warmed by their cast-off bodies, sheltered by their harvested limbs.

And rocks don’t last forever either. But their comparative longevity is comforting.

And what’s forever, anyway? The little God on my shoulder—the one that ordained this moment–whispers something in my ear. “It’s music. Or another name for winter.”

Ah. I see. Listen to me all you fireflies and buffalo, nymphs and gnomes, wind and sun, seeds and stones. This is the gospel for today: Trees don’t live forever. Rocks don’t last forever. Bus rides eventually end. The earth is a circle moving in circles, creating the cradle, smoothing the grave. And that is how it should be. Amen.

Where things are written

Rita Sommers-Flanagan6 Comments

imported-from-the-camera-april-2014-412-2“Hey, God,” I yelled, angrily turning off the radio. “Are you aware there’s a large, huge, ginormous number of people down here using the Bible to control and hurt people? They’re yanking it around. They’re managing to make it say hateful things.”

“Yeah,” God said.

“Well,” I said, after waiting to see if God might want to elaborate. “Well. Could you step in here? I mean, they’re doing some real damage. You would not believe it.”

“Yes, I would,” God said.

“So, what gives? How can they do that? How can you let them? Somehow, they’re ignoring the basics, drilling down on obscure things, acting like know-it-alls. They’ve gone after gay people, and women, and brown skins, and they adore rich people, excusing all sorts of crap that you wouldn’t like. And acting like they don’t have to love anyone but themselves, and like it is okay to hate.

“Are you jealous?”

“What? No. Are you nuts? Fuck no. Hell no. I’m like that Psalmist. I only hate those who hate you. I want to chop off the heads of their babies…” I was being as sarcastic as I could possibly be.

God began to materialize, and she wasn’t in the best mood. She shook her head, and removed her hairpins, so her long thick mane fell to her waist. Her black eyes blazed. “Don’t do that,” she said, her voice stern. “You know better.”

“How?” I snapped back. “How do I know better, huh? There’s ugliness everywhere, and contradictions, and things that don’t make sense, and impossible commandments that no one even attempts, but then they try to defend things like capital punishment, and war, and they lord it over others. And forgiveness? Ha! And humility? Give me a break. And Mercy? Justice? Truth? Not a chance. It’s just greed and fear, greed and fear. We’re humans. By definition, we kill each other.”

God could see I was pretty wound up, so she waited and let me spew it all out. I ranted a bit more, but gradually grew calmer. She motioned for me to sit down, which I did, reluctantly.

“Honey, you’ve been reading with your eyes again, trying to fight judgement with judgement, fire with fire. Hunting for convincing words—written words—strokes of ink on paper. Screaming for answers in an answerless world.”

Oh, this made me crazy. I leaped up and grabbed for her hair. It turned to water. I drank. Her beautiful body turned to rain. I bathed. Through the clear water, I could see my heart, beating. I could see what was written there. In the profound silence of her absence, I could hear the tender whisper of this one small life I am trying to live.

 

A random text from God

Rita Sommers-Flanagan3 Comments

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God texted to see if I’d be available for a get-together one Tuesday shortly after I’d finished the chemo. I clenched my jaw as I acknowledged I was free, but pointed out other options in case I could throw him off. He’s crazy, and difficult to talk to sometimes. Slow to speak, unassuming, but simultaneously requiring too much unearned adoration. Seriously. He’s almost condescending. And often he sets up these meetings and then no-shows. He runs out of money and his phone shuts down.

I called his mother later in the week, just to see if anything God said was true. “Yes,” the mother of God said. “He’s honest. Just unfiltered. He’s got a lot on his mind, you know.” She paused and said, “Say, you don’t happen to have any contact information, do you? He’s been out of touch with the family for a while.”

This set me back on my heels. Where was God? Last I knew, he was eating at the homeless shelter, picking up odd jobs and repairing bicycles. He likes to camp along the river if it isn’t too cold. How could I tell his mother this? How could his mother not know?

As Tuesday approached, I grew more and more anxious. I wished I could cancel, but with God, this is difficult. He arrived early, agitated. “Did you call my mother?” he asked, slapping his fist into his hand. He was clearly angry.

“No,” I lied. God knew. We locked eyes for a brief moment. Then he looked out the window at the apricot tree. “Looks like rain,” he said.

“Yes,” I said, sobbing. Why did everything have to be this hard? I’d lost my last apricot tree to aphids, and two sweet cherry trees to moles. I’d lost my uterus to cancer and my idealism to the nightly news. And now, God was angry just because I called his mother.

“Look,” God said, the anger abated. “Just as you are. And just as I AM.”

Then he put his long thin arms around me and bent his wild head down so it touched the top of my partially-regrown hair. “So it is, and so it will be.” His voice was as soft and dense as sleep. I climbed in, and was welcomed into the folds of that voice.

I still find rest in that thick, palpable space. There are so few places that offer any kind of shelter these days. I’m thankful, but sometimes, lately, it’s too crowded and noisy to really relax. And who knows which of these refugees might be carrying a bomb? I’ve been asked to carry one myself, but so far, I’ve refused.

 

 

Garden Mud

Rita Sommers-Flanagan4 Comments

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I’m a well-fed, reasonably educated entity with permeable but definitive boundaries that temporarily separate me from the mud in the garden. I am one with the Universe, one of billions, yet I must be unique. I’ve been assured that the hairs on my head are numbered. This is a particularly odd assurance, since I’m thinking the numbers change daily, hourly, with every bath, brush, or injection of chemicals meant to wipe out fast-growing cells in the body. And even if my hairs are numbered, I’d rather be known by other measures. Say, for instance, how many bags of leaves I’ve rerouted from the landfill, or the number of houses I’ve recycled. Or the number of BTUs I’ve saved by washing said hair in cold water.

I’m veering dangerously close to an appearance by God. No. No, I am not of more value than a whole flock of sparrows. I remember flocks of sparrows undulating in the summer sky. As if a giant housekeeper was standing a thousand feet high in the afternoon sun, shaking out a sparrow rug, the flick of her wrist sending the birds gliding in perfectly coordinated waves. And the lilies of the field? Give me a break. Alicia Keys and I have both stopped wearing make-up, but I’m not giving up my pajamas or down jackets any time soon.

Okay, God. Fine. Have a seat. Would you like the last of the coffee? A cookie? Do you realize when you stop by like this, I feel more alone than ever? Why, you wonder? Well, here’s why.

I live in here. In this particular body, fraught with imperfection and vulnerability. In this particular brain, with its wonderments, endless questions, faulty connections and short circuits, in this particular soul, with forces of compassion endlessly squaring off with forces of selfishness. I don’t know how long this will last, or what matters. To be honest, I’d like to think I matter, but I’m not convinced.

I watch God out of the corner of my eye, sipping lukewarm coffee, nodding. I watch God go molecular and melt into the atmosphere. I watch the atmosphere, thick with God, shimmering. I touch my own thin skin.

Last night, I fried up the last of the paltry potato crop, grown in the dark womb of the garden. I threw in onions and kale, from the same dirt, and I ate. Today, I am nourished, ready for action. From a certain distance, this all makes sense. Close up, I’m tentative, solitary. But if God is to be believed, hair or no hair, I am as dazzling as the nearest star.

Three Pears

Rita Sommers-Flanagan4 Comments

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Three pear-shaped candles line up, centered, on the long dining table this morning. They are stunningly simple. I bought them yesterday for 75 cents each at the Family Services thrift store in Billings, and they are beautiful. Perfect. I wasn’t looking for three pear-shaped candles, but there they were, in the bottom of a box still being sorted and shelved. I love shopping among the hand-me-down, cast-off excesses of our current culture. The stores are filled with rejected items that have learned a new, humble language. I speak rejection-redemption fluently. These pears found me, reached up through the plastic plates and chipped cups, and spoke quietly of their unique potential–their desire to live, one more time, in a place of recognition and service.

Now they sit centered in their own reflections on the shiny table, pastel shades of lemon yellow, barn red, and sage green. I offer thanks for the celestial river in which I float, letting the currents take me hither and yon. I’m especially grateful for the little tributary that took me to these pears yesterday. Less so for last evening, when I dumped back into the mainstream, watching a crime show that featured the agonizing torture of a female prison inmate.

The prison guard’s sadism, the cellmate’s betrayal. Too real. I wish I hadn’t watched. I know too many stories, too many real inmates, too many guards. I try to refocus on the pears. But the magic is gone.

“What?” I say, petulantly, to the open room. I stick my wounded thumb in my mouth, hoping the saliva will hasten the healing. I’m curled on the couch, growing a little agitated as I remember the awful drama.

“I speak rejection-redemption fluently, too,” replies the open room, also known as Allah, God, Creator, Author, Redeemer, Devi, Vishnu, Yahweh, maybe even Buddha. Right now, I prefer Open Room. I answer quickly. “Inmates aren’t pear-shaped candles. I do not, I repeat, do not, want them at my dining table.”

“Okay,” says Open Room. “Who’ll we invite instead?”

“Safe, nice, pretty people,” I say, mocking myself.

“Should they look like you?” Open Room asks, as if offering a compliment.

“You got it. And not too many, either. And not too often.”

“Okay,” says Open Room. “Your loss.”

Ah, that stings. I pull my thumb out of my mouth.

Open Room looks on sympathetically. My thumb is still ugly, but healing nicely from a recent power drill accident. We sit in the warmth of the fire, looking out the window at the day made crystal clear by the rain that fell all night.

Groin

Rita Sommers-Flanagan5 Comments

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It was early morning, at my daughter’s apartment in the city. I hadn’t slept well thanks to the noises from below. “God,” I said, yawning. “Could you heal this damn groin stretch?” I put my hand there in case God wasn’t sure what I meant. No answer. No relief. No surge of warmth. No nothing. I gave up after a few supplications and clumsily rolled to my feet.

My back hurts and my groin is probably throwing my whole spine into disarray. I have a herniated disc, degenerative disc disease, arthritis, osteoporosis, and an attitude.

“God,” I said, as I sipped my coffee. But what’s there to say? I’d hardly had any rest, and there’s a chance God’s a bit tired of my whining.

The guy in the apartment below vomited through the wee hours, heaving and swearing, heaving and swearing. Even now, I can hear him moaning and complaining. It might be the flu, but I think more likely, he drank too much.

How’s that for compassion?

A whole family lives down there, below grade, incessantly shouting and screaming at each other. Their babies whimper up through the floor boards. Hours before the vomiting began, I heard the dad reading “Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed” to the toddler. It was a creepy, manic rendition, punctuated by what sounded like the dad destroying the place by leaping illustratively on the furniture. The child’s laughter was forced, tentative, unsure. Was Daddy funny? By God, he better be.

Where are the missionaries when you need them? Or the cops? Within three blocks, there are at least five churches. Some majestic, others store-front humble, some declaring the Holy Spirit lives within the walls. Indeed. And the sirens sound all night. It’s that part of town. But down below, people have reproduced in selfish misery, sanctioned by the same biological urges that lead me to lift things I shouldn’t anymore. It is the same force that allows a seed to sprout through a crack in the pavement.

I’m not going down there. I’m not saying anything. Except, well, yes, I’ll mention them to the Universe, but only in passing. My more fervent prayer is that I not be reincarnated as one of those children. I doubt any of us actually hopes for cosmic justice.

Amidst my shameful mutterings, God slips in and hands me a Charades card. I turn it over; all it says is “Grace.” Grace. Ah ha! A motion-detector goes off in the dark thrashings of my soul, and I see clearly–just like the song says. It is, in fact, grace that brought me safe thus far. Me and my groin, my longings, my failings, fears, diseases, aversions, and befuddlements. And it’s grace that will lead me home. Eventually. Home.

But God is laughing in the corner. This startles me. I turn so we’re face to face. “You’re already home, darling,” God says, slapping a fat thigh, winking. “You’re already home.”

“No,” I say gently back to God. “No, I’m not.”

Comfort Ye My People

Rita Sommers-FlanaganLeave a comment

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Can this be happening? An inauguration like no other. With millions of citizens in the United States, as well as perhaps billions across the globe, I keep waiting to wake up from this nightmare. Hate was elected. Hard work was scorned. Lies were elevated to truth. Honesty was ridiculed. People voted against their own best interests. Deception and selfishness won. Fear won. Love lost.

But….It appears I’m awake, and slowly, I realize I’m not alone. God has ridden into the room on waves of heat rising from the wood stove. She’s materializing slowly. I see the luminous eyes first.

Right now, I’m happy to see God, no matter what the agenda or guise might be, but I’m especially overjoyed to see that She’s materializing as the large Black woman I’ve come to love so much. I know that soft lap and those protective arms. For the briefest moment, I think she’s here to comfort me in my abject despair, and I’m so relieved. I want to be her favorite. While I sit in her presence, I want her to stroke my hair and fix all the brokenness–mine and the world’s.

Usually, I snuggle right up. But as I take in the whole scene, there’s no way I’m crawling in, or anywhere near that Holiness. God hasn’t come alone. Squeezed in beside her on the couch, there’s a writhing snake, a belligerent bully, a snapping turtle, a stalking tiger, and she’s situated a frightened little boy on that lovely ample lap. She’s got a whole crowd of greedy, demanding brats stomping on her toes, a rat’s nest in her hair, and vultures circling. She has nails in her palms and a noose around her neck. The crowd is shouting that she should go back to wherever the hell she came from. They want a different God.

“Hello, God,” I whisper, trying to remember my manners despite the terror rising in my throat. “Do you want some tea or something?”

“That would be nice,” she says. “And bring a cup for the new president.” Though I would rather do almost anything else in the entire world, I know she means it. I am utterly enraged. I feel like joining the group near the fireplace chanting “Lock her up.” But I’m trapped in God’s gaze. This gaze is like nothing else. It is pure love. I bring two cups of tea, fighting the urge to put rat poison in one of them, and with a dramatic flair, I set them on the coffee table, spilling a little. I break off eye contact, back my way out of the room, up the stairs, and into bed. I get under the covers and sob until mercifully, I fall asleep and sink deep into the sleep of the dead.

When I awake, the world is trying its best to be beautiful, but I will have none of it. Both cups are empty, the room a wasteland. I clean up the chaos such as I can, but the stains on the new rug are better left alone. I tried bleach on one of them, but it left a thin white spot, devoid of color. It looked far worse than the bright red blood.

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Paying the Bills

Rita Sommers-FlanaganLeave a comment

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Money isn’t an easy topic with God. On one hand, he’s rigid and highly opinionated, and on the other, he’s like “Oh, money. Whatever.”

But God had pulled up a chair and was watching me write checks. A few of them were to charities. Avoiding topics with God never works for long, so I might as well confess a few things. My relationship with money is convoluted. I like it but it scares me. I try to think of it all as a gift–a loan from the Universe, but the evidence provided by my warm house and my full stomach points to my own hard work, my own savings plans, my own bargain-hunting, my own birth, family, values, and choices.

I don’t have to go very far down the road to see people suffering from lack of money. Is this their own damn fault? Is this God’s own damn fault? Is this my own damn fault?

“God,” I say. “We’ve been over this a million times, but today…do you have anything to add? I knew he’d been riding along on my train of thought.

“Sure,” God says, cheerfully. “Which would make you more afraid. No money, or no God?”

My gut twists as I think about this. No money would stink. I’d be thrown on the mercy of others and that would be humiliating, at best. But no God would mean no loving, intelligent force behind, under, in, and around the known and unknown universe. That would stink worse. I imagine myself dying of hunger or exposure, in excruciating pain. I turn to the God I carry around—the God I believe in more or less, most of the time—and it’s good to have that imagined God beside me in my imagined poverty or pain.

“Ok. I’m more afraid of no God,” I say slowly, “But that doesn’t answer my question.” Even as I say this, I realize I don’t know what my question is exactly. Of course, God pounces on that.

“You don’t know what to ask because these are Living Questions, and you have to live the answers,” God said. He sounded like a tired professor. “In your species, there are no pure motives. This confuses you.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “You’re talking about consciousness, right? Paired off against biology. Do you have any idea what a pain that can be?”

God gave me a look, but I kept going.  “Are you sure we were ready for consciousness?” I asked, my heart heavy with the human condition. War, fake news, hunger, injustice, cruelty–the lying, stealing, hating, greedy ways humans can be.

“No,” God said. “I’m not sure. It’s been agonizing so far. But I have faith in you people. And no matter what, I’ll stick it out, alongside and within.”

“Oh, thanks,” I said, sarcastically.

“Don’t mention it,” God said, matching my sarcasm. “That’s just the kind of God I am.”

We were both upset. Me, a puny little human, trying to be honest. God, weary. Disappointed. Infinite.

“I’m sorry,” I said, looking at his slumped shoulders.

“Me too,” God said. “Me too.”

We sat a while, glad for each other’s company. Daunted by the magnitude of what we had to do.