Category Archives: Human

Is it Running?

Taking the journey of a thousand miles

Begins with a step, like those of a child

Returning to home or breaking one down

Making either world turn upside down

Taking the challenge that long is awaited

Bulldozing through obstacles unabated

Loyalty valiant to some of the house

Struggling for liberty in emotional joust.

What once was a longing, a need, an addiction

Is now a source of painful contradiction.

What one house rejects and claims desire

The other beckons with strength in the sire

What confusion lay in the mind of the child

To remain in chaos, trust long defiled

The raping of faith, knocked down from up high

denied the dreams with nary tears in the eyes

Blame things on everything, never their own

In the mean time, for eons, one stands alone

Time has passed by, much time indeed

When the child understands for them, no need

Abandoned, refused, forgotten, unwanted

Should the journey begin, progress undaunted?

Should the heart set aside the anger and sorrow?

Should the child remember there is always tomorrow?

The escape hatch is opened, standing ajar:

Will the house be destroyed from the will from afar?

Will temptation desecrate the once sacred heart?

Is all that it takes is a short time apart?

Fire Walkers

Come join in the dance of the Firewalkers

Come join in the song of the giving

Come join in the joy of the fearless talkers

Come join your hearts of the living

Once they were lost in pain and sorrow

Once they denied it, no joy to borrow

Once they’d forgotten who they were

Once they left for freedom unsure

Once they were nothing but frightened

Once they were hurting and raw

Once they were banished by self-induced exile

Once they were blind to what they saw

Once they rejected a healing touch

Once they gave in to what seemed too much

Once they refused of life to play a part

Once they closely guarded their jaded hearts.

We sing:

Come join in the dance of the Firewalkers

Come join in the song of the giving

Come join in the joy of the fearless talkers

Come join your hearts of the living

Once they were left broken and crying

Once they were deluged with the lying

Once they felt left out in the cold

Once they were rejected for being so bold

Once they were chastised for their thinking

Once they were left to their addictions and drinking

Once they refused the hand that was offered

Once they had drained all of false-love’s coffers

Once they’d gotten lost in the days

Once they felt overcharged and way underpaid

Once they found comfort in self destructive ways

Once they refused to kneel and pray.

Now they sing:

Come join in the dance of the Firewalkers

Come join in the song of the giving

Come join in the joy of the fearless talkers

Come join your hearts of the living

Now that freedom is here with you

Now we can help release pain from you

Come join in the dance of the Firewalkers

Come join in the song of the giving

Come join in the joy of the fearless talkers

Come join your hearts of the living

Pssst! I wanna show you something

Yesterday I worked hard on rearranging, moving, stuffing, cutting, thinking, and mostly trying to figure out my vision. At the end of several hours, I’m well on my way to getting things where I’d like them to be. With less than two months to go to modify, I want to make sure that I’ve done my homework, have it just so. 2014 has been a monumental year for me. I’ve collected my works, some previously unreleased work, and art from myself, friends, and some not-yet-met friends.

Sneak Peak at the numbers

Sneak Peak at the numbers

This doesn’t include the art or the graphics, just what I’ve created this year with a few surprises to myself. I’m so excited, I wanted to share this with you.

Love Thy Neighbor Campaign

I’d really like for you to join me in the Love Thy Neighbor Campaign. Below is a link where you can purchase the shirts and wear them with pride while you perform public acts of random kindness to your fellow humans. They’re very affordable, stylish, and the best part is, if I don’t meet the 20 I need to meet the minimum sales goal, you don’t even get charged!

I’d really like to meet my first goal of 20 shirts, so please buy the shirt, share the link, and act responsibly while wearing the shirt to promote Unity in CommUNITY!

Love Thy Neighbor

SAMPLE

Don’t catch “The Gay!”

I fully support LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender) rights as both active participants in society and as human beings. I support their right to marry whom they love. I support their fights against discrimination.

I come to you as a human being. I am not a perfect person, nor do I profess to be. I struggle to keep my judgment in check. It’s so easy to point fingers and call one another hypocrites. It’s easy to look at someone and tell them they are wrong. It’s easy to reflect on my own life and color pretty shades of happy all over the pages I messed up by my poor choices. But what is even easier, it seems, is to do so in the name of religious intolerance.

I have seen on my Facebook feed posts about intolerance and injustices of the world. I see people hating others because of their sexual orientation. I see people hating because of the color of skin (Yes, even now.) I see people tearing down the President. I witness people spewing hateful messages because of gender. I see people calling each other names so vile that they taste bitter to speak them aloud. I see people projecting their own beliefs out into the world whether they are hateful or not, most commonly under the guise of religion.

In my belief system, the Lord and Lady in their duality are everywhere. They hang in the trees, they breathe the wind, they flow in riverbeds, they dance among the stars. The sense of serenity that I feel when I am out in nature is as good for me as a guided meditation or deep contemplative prayer. While I pray, I’m reminded constantly that happiness, tolerance, kindness, and especially love are my ways to finding my peace of mind, heart and soul. To achieve balance in both male and female aspects of myself, I need to be immersed in the joy of life. I need to be tolerant of other’s beliefs.

There are laws in my faith as well. One of our most important laws is, “Harm none.” That means myself and others. That means leaving nothing but footprints in a forest. That means helping someone who asks for it. That means giving and taking. A harmonious balance between the light and the dark sides of my inner self have to join equally for me to feel whole. To me that means opening my heart to infinite possibilities done in the name of love and harmony. To me, even when I’m sad or feel broken, I know that I need only pray. This allows the love energy to flow freely.

In the Christian faith, Jesus is asked, “What is the greatest commandment in the Law?”

His response, found in Matthew 22:35-41 says, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’[a] 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’[b] 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

The words are deep and profound. In the words of Rev. Linda Looney, “Jesus’ message of inclusivity and love seems very radical. It WAS radical because of the impurity laws of Judaism, the absolutes, the impossibility of keeping every facet of the law. THAT is what we were saved from – the impossible law that was absolutely IMPOSSIBLE to keep, therefore it made people sinners for not keeping the law.”

Jesus didn’t say ‘Love your neighbor unless he is gay.’ or “Love your neighbor as long as they worship the same God.” He said to Love them as yourself. It would seem to me that there are a lot of people who can’t stand themselves out there in the world. They’d rather worry about what consenting adults do in their private lives than to feed the third world countries. They’d rather ridicule and spout hatred than to follow God’s command through His Son Jesus Christ.

This has caused me many years of contemplation. When I began to love myself, I realized that people around me are struggling with the same stuff I do every day. Just like a gay man or a lesbian or a straight person, I worry about bills, kids, schools, work, chores, etc. Just like a Christian, I pray for peace and love to rule the world instead of anger and viciousness. What face do I perceive when I pray? I see the face of the Goddess. I see the face of God. I feel the balance as if everything I ask for will be so. Not like a magic wish factory, but as in peace of mind. I don’t feel alone any more. I feel comfort from my day to day life from Father and Mother God/dess. I feel love for all creatures great and small.

I’ve heard people say to me, because I speak my mind, “Well, I’m a Christian and you aren’t.” As if that’s reason enough to reject another human. I say to them, “Well if you were such a Christian, why aren’t you living the life of Christ?” Jesus was all about loving one another. He loved his disciples so much (and they him) that they walked around all over the place teaching together. Why aren’t we more like that? It seems that Christ’s lessons are used only when it is convenient.

Jesus says, ALL your heart, ALL your soul, ALL your mind. If that commandment, the one Jesus says is the most important, is to be honored, how can there be any room for intolerance? How can there be room for God when the heart is filled with such hate towards my fellow man? How can I be truthful to my spirit when I’m unwilling to follow His lessons and commands?

In 1 John 4:8 it says: “Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.” It is my interpretation that if God is love then wasting time with anger and hate towards the LGBT Community takes away from the glory of God. It takes away the potency of His words. It degrades and defiles Jesus by not following His instructions to love one another.

What love is capable of can be found in the story of my mother and myself. For years I held on to anger that I felt towards my mother. I was certain that she was the single-most horrid mother in history. I painted a horrible picture of her. Although some of it may have been true, it was only in my perception that was true.

My mother and I were estranged for 17 long years. We didn’t start speaking until about two years ago. During the course of our conversations, I came to a deeper understanding of our relationship. On her 65th birthday, together we burned a venomous letter that I had written that had, in part, caused the distance between us. As that letter burned in the bucket, I looked at her face. I saw my face 20 years from now. I saw my own blood flowing through her veins. I saw hope and love. I’d been so quick to toss blame. We’d soiled something that shouldn’t have been an issue had we followed the lessons we were taught.

The sense of peace, hope, love, and respect that I feel for her is stronger than it has ever been. I saw her for the first time as a human being, just like me. I saw her with kindness in my heart rather than anger. I was able to take the lessons I’ve learned and follow another important lesson that was taught to me at her knee. Jesus taught the lesson about judgment. His words were meant to show that there is a better way to do things.In Matthew 7:2-4 (NIV) 2 For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.

3 “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? 4 How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye?

No matter what I am faced with, I know that if I follow the simple laws of harming no others, of loving one another as I love my Lord and Lady, of holding onto my judgment and letting things be as they are, of offering hope and care wherever it is needed, then I am doing my part. I have been told that I am the most Christian non-Christian. I’m proud of that. I don’t reject the teachings I was brought up with, nor do I reject my fellow human beings despite their age, race, gender, sexual orientation, or any other criteria. As for me and mine, we will bide by the Law of Love, not hatred. I will love my brothers and sisters in spirit no matter what their beliefs or choices. In that way, and with deepest respect for those who object on the grounds of religion, I wish you nothing but peace and love in your hearts.

Peace to you and yours.

Hymn: My Mourning Praise

Although I get lost, lose my compass, and fall down

the skies they open up and rain tears all around

the unchallenged thoughts of sadness and despair

Fill my thoughts and eyes, around me like the air

When I can’t find purchase on the ground beneath my feet

and the easiest thing I can do is hang my head in defeat

The light at the end of the tunnel seems so far away

and the pain I feel inside leaves me in unworthy sway

I will turn to you for blessings, eternity unbound

I will bow my head in reverence your love for me abounds

I will hear your spirit remind me that someone really cares

I will heed your wisdom, my heart will be repaired

I will sing the song of unity, hands destitute of conceit

I will share my abundant comforting, my miseries retreat

I will flow with my divinity releasing my malaise

I will give to you the honor of my mourning praise

October, 2011: The Spider Dance

Every night for the past two weeks we’ve had a large garden spider build its web on our porch post. I’m not a particular fan of spiders, but this one was large enough to witness many events of its life. I watched as it caught bugs in its record album web. It pulled huge holes in its hard work to wrap up its latest victim.  If I blew on the web, it would raise up its front legs with the second set waving violently to protect its domain. I sort of “adopted” this spider because it carried on despite my fascination with it.

 Last night, however, there was an epic battle in the circle of life that I was fortunate enough to witness.

The web was built in the spiraling pattern with my “pet” sitting square in the middle. He had already enjoyed a tasty snack on a couple of larger bugs that landed and promptly became trapped. For most of the evening a smaller wolf spider kept trying to get up into the center only to be chased off by the larger garden spider that called my porch home.

The pushing of boundaries didn’t seem to be working for the wolf spider all that well. Whenever it would get close, the garden spider would drop down, hiss (if that’s what that noise was) and the smaller spider would back off by turning and spinning away smoothly on it’s own addition to the web. This repeated for a few hours. Test, guard, retreat, try again.

I wasn’t feeling well so I went out on the porch to sit in the noisy night. I noticed that the little wolf spider was still trying to take over the larger spider’s domain. This time, the tactic had changed. Instead of the wolf spider attempting to move in from the bottom of the web, it had climbed up the post and was trying a horizontal instead of vertical approach. Cautiously, the wolf spider crept farther and farther towards the center where the garden spider sat, seemingly unawares of the invasion.

The wolf spider rushed towards the center, but the garden spider, realizing his peril, pushed back the onslaught with wildly waving forefeet. The wolf spider turned and ran, but not to the edge of the web as he had been doing. He only retreated a few inches before turning to once again attack. As the wolf spider moved forward, the garden spider refused to retreat. He pushed forward and again drove the attack back.

When the two spiders did get close enough, the waving of the front four legs from both of them was truly amazing. I’d never seen spiders fight before, so I was quite fascinated. Waving madly, they both held their part of the web with violent tenacity. Neither one would allow any give. If the garden spider moved forward, the wolf spider’s legs would seemingly get stuck in the web. If the wolf spider moved forward, the garden spider raised up to its full height and punched viciously.

“Oh my God!” ripped from my lips when the wolf spider, without warning, leaped forward and had the garden spider wrapped tightly within its deadly embrace. It appeared to be stinging the garden spider with its rear end. The front legs of the garden spider were waving madly and not finding any purchase as it hung from a strand of its own web. The wolf spider relentlessly gripped the garden spider’s hind quarters. A shiny jelly-like substance oozed down the garden spider’s belly. The once frantic legs twitched slightly as the wolf spider ate. A few more twitches and my “pet” spider became the hunted and killed.

UPDATED THE NEXT DAY: Spider okay, turns out they were just mating rather violently. I feel dirty.

Hear the Alarm! Don’t Hit Snooze!

Chapter Two:
I woke up to the sound of a leaf blower screaming outside my window. As I awakened my senses with coffee, the scream of first Wednesday of the Month sirens warned me of what I’d find as election results, but I didn’t understand. I feel so mournful as I think of what was lost yesterday (Thankfully not in the precinct I worked because I still had hope for Tennessee when I went to sleep). I watch, now, the rain drizzle down and my emotions reflect it.

I mourn for the people who have bought propaganda at the discount price that was sold at the dollar general tree. I mourn for those unwanted, unadoptable, hungry, sick, rejected children who will be born into a world that claims ownership but rejects responsibility. I mourn the education of these invisible children because what can’t be seen is clearly absent of life.

I mourn for the uterus that just turned inside out for the world to see but heaven forbid you see a child being fed at the breast of their mother. I mourn for the women who no longer will have a say in what happens to her own body but, in truth, am grateful that my body rejects the rooted seeds so my children will never know that I lived in such a horror movie of a state.

I mourn with my friends and thinking people who are wrenched with grief over the return to a time many of us don’t remember but are grateful to those that do and fought so hard to create a better place that was blown down by the Big Bad Wolf. I mourn in the form of dreaming exodus claiming political asylum in my own country which has returned to Jim Crowe against women and the LGBTQ communities while holding the marquee for next election saying that the brown skinned people don’t matter enough anyway so we’ll eliminate any aid so we can fill our fields with their broken backs and dreams.

I mourn for the prisons being built as plantation houses for the next generation of slaves that this election has purveyed onto the citizens of the United States. I mourn for those souls who are told from their conception that they’re wanted and loved only to be born into a world where those promises are broken. “May as well learn to live with disappointment, sons and daughters, because you ain’t no kin to me.” I mourn for that mentality being accepted as fact.

But most of all, I mourn that so many of my kin, my brothers and sisters of Light, are caught in so much darkness that they’re afraid to shine too brightly. I encourage you, my beautiful friends, to not give up even while the mourning strikes your heart with the righteous shame of indignities served on our hearts, minds, and bodies. Without us, that margin would have been far greater and the obvious ignorance would spill farther into this world.

We are the vessels that contain hope. We are the steps the future MUST take or we, as a free society, will fail. We are the eyes that see the changes that MUST be made. We are the hands that MUST NOT fail to act in the name of justice. We are the voices that MUST be raised repeatedly against ignorance. We are the backs that MUST bear the burden of challenging each defeat with a solid stance of support not only for one another but for those who are and will be victimized by these misguided amendments.

The warnings have blared at us, like my alarm clock of despair outside our window. It’s up to us as a people to determine whether we hit the snooze button on our kin, or whether we rise to the challenge that they’ve again faced and forced upon us. Me, I’ll put on my top hat and rise because without hope, there is no way I will survive.

Professional Writer of Eulogies

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Happy 7th Anniversary, Ben Stotler

It’s Always Been You

This was taken on our wedding day November 3rd, 2007 (Ben's birthday too). We were wed at 129 Andy Fox Lane in Clinton, TN with a bonfire we lit together, falling leaves, and our loved ones surrounding us.

This was taken on our wedding day November 3rd, 2007 (Ben’s birthday too). We were wed at 129 Andy Fox Lane in Clinton, TN with a bonfire we lit together, falling leaves, and our loved ones surrounding us. Each year since, I’ve given my husband a poem to commemorate our love, grateful for another year to spend with my best friend. This year it’s a song but I don’t have the talent to write the music, so I post the lyrics. He’s the best husband I’ve ever had.

I looked for love

Each time that I thought I’d had it

I’d reach out my heart to nab it

But like smoke and mirrors

It disappeared

That went on for years

As I tried to hold and grab it…

Until you.

It’s always been you

Each time that I deeply breathe

As far as I can farthest see

You cherish my heart

Because it’s you…it’s always been you.

I needed love

Everywhere I went I sought your star

Man, I traveled ever so far

Always close but no cigar

I jumped the brooms and broke the jars

My heart rejecting the impo”stars”

Because of you.

It’s always been you.

Each time that I deeply breathe

As far as I can farthest see

You cherish my heart

Because it’s you…it’s always been you.

Each time that I’d take the chance

I’d find “Mr. No-Romance” or

“Mr. Look-what’s-in-my pants” or

“Mr. I-refuse-your-dance”

But it’s simple, don’t you see?

Rejecting them for the love of me

Because of you.

It’s always been you.

Each time that I deeply breathe

As far as I can farthest see

You cherish my heart

Because it’s you…it’s always been you.