Rainbows

Just discovered this poem which I posted  a long while ago as a comment on a blog post about diversity in the church.

I am white
I am a woman
I am a white woman
too distracted by her own exclusion
to include another
to reach out
to reach down
to see
to really see the invisible people
I live in a world
where white still has the power
I need to share
the spotlight
pass the mic
open the door
stoop down  
listen
to the whispers
to the songs
to the heartbreak
I am a white women
and I thirst for color
rainbows and rainbows of color
rainbows and rainbows of color
painting the canvas of heaven
with rainbows and rainbows of color

A Maternal Memorial

Driving.. on my way to buy stuff

By the Hand of My Father,

from the Paper Boys

Is playing on my ipod.

As the words that I am singing along to

start to sink in

all the way in

past my defenses

past my consumerist distractions

past the soft layers I’ve added on over the years

One day late

I cry for her

Crazy as a loon

By the hand of my father

but never by the hand of my mother

she never used power and violence to hurt me

maybe because she had no power

A powerless crazy ol’ woman

who never beat me

suffered

gave birth

plunged me into this world

taught me how to tie a bow

and draw paper dolls

and carried me through the snow

and that was it

all she could give

but enough

I cry

Maternal memory is carried down river

as grief for our great matriarch

casts its yawl into my willing emotional current

Our Mother

perpetually raped

is now being soiled

with the black semen

of man’s lust for power,

Our Mother

left barren

must watch

as her children drown

in it’s filth

We weep

We mothers weep

We grandmothers weep

for our great mother

our schizophrenic mother

who heaves and throws tantrums

and sometimes tries to

shake herself free of us

and protect herself

from the hands of our fathers

Travel Log: Departure

Of course I had “to go” the moment we got to the airport, but couldn’t until I had gotten my luggage checked in and gone through the gun and knife detectors. My well trained traveling eyes quickly scanned the large hall for the code language signaling my next immediate destination. The one universal symbol to distinguish the lady’s powder room from the men’s john is a knee length hooped skirt, but looking around the Memmingen airport at the 300 plus or minus people who are waiting with me to board the Ryan Air flight to Dublin, not one of them is wearing a skirt or dress of any kind... oops, there is one. Only one. Wearing a tight mini. Funny how our symbols live on long after the reality has left town. Peculiar too, how we use symbols not only to help us get closer to something, but also to help us keep a safe distance. We use them as a kind of shield, so that we don’t have to go to some uncomfortable place. Although only one person in that waiting hall was actually wearing a skirt, about half of us were most likely wearing a bra (see, still keeping my distance). We all know what really distinguishes those who need the men’s room from those who need the lady’s, but for some reason, we still find it vulgar to make any kind of direct reference to it. Where so many outer, symbolic images are loosing their validity in communicating the distinction between the sexes, each trying to catch a live fish with their bare, oily hands, the essence of this gender specific diversity lives on to goad us.

And in case you are ever unsure which one is the lady’s room, it will usually be the one that all the men are standing in front of.