Honeysuckle & Sage

I was born in late May, the rhododendron still in full fushia bloom and being craddled in arms every where upward bright sloshes of green across a blue sky-- the oak, the dogwood, the tulip poplar, the holly, the pine andthe japanese red maple tossing upward its own incongruent deep maron. I was born in the garden.  I knew I had sinned by the time I was four, the nursery aids returning me to my mother to be disciplined, though I don't remember being punished. I had inherited her ornery-ness.  I remember standing on a bench. Climbing a net. the scent of salt in the air at the ocean. I remember the first time my truth wasn't believed, something simple  a doll's lips being painted pink then red and my sister's denial. the stubborn seed rooting in me, that as a three year old, I would hold this memory like a closed fist, I would remember that I was right whether anyone believed me or not. I remember rocks. hopping upstream. building dams. catching crawfish. sw...

//Tonight I read the rain as sacred text      that is: with awe, without full comprehension   my spirit the sculpted canyon walls       through which it ran and yet was held// Before I moved out here people asked me how my position working with disability justice was connected to border justice. In response, I've been thinking about how the border region is affected by so much more than immigration itself-- the economic partnerships, trade, transnational corporations and their influence, the involvement of oil & gas companies, military presence and militarization of the border, veterans and retirees, water issues and agreements to send water on to Texas & Mexico. New Mexico is the state with the highest per capita phd-holders yet is somewhere around 49th in grade school education outcomes.  During our orientation we met with Pastor Rosemary in El Paso to discuss border economics, her congregation spans one of the poorest zip codes in the U...

"Wherever I've lived I've felt at home." - Blake It seems like more than five days have passed since I moved into J-House. J-House-- with the wind shook pecan tree leaving dappled shadows on the backyard, with the sun too brilliant over the Organ mountains to open my eastward shade, with our five spots at the table already ritualized and our stories and questions unwinding and weaving together. The quickness of adapting to new spaces always surprises me.  On  Sunday we met and joined our fellow residents of Las Cruces for the first time at a solidarity vigil (" sometimes there is only one side" .) Tuesday we built a keyhole garden in our yard with the help of the El Paso house and our neighbor guide, Blake. We met with a pastor and then a Buddhist priest who guided us in zen practice-- the sacredness of the ordinary, the ordinariness of the sacred. It has felt easy to fall into step with my housemates-- dinners shared with neighbors, mapping out our s...

One of my favorite things to think about, discuss, and try to live out is relationship anarchy . Here's one definition: “Relational anarchists are often highly critical of conventional cultural standards that prioritize romantic and sex-based relationships over non-sexual or non-romantic relationships. Instead, RA seeks to eliminate specific distinctions between or hierarchical valuations of friendships versus love-based relationships, so that love-based relationships are no more valuable than are platonic friendships...another important theme within RA is the resistance to placing demands or expectations on the people involved in a relationship.”  I see posts all the time that attribute sort've magical qualities to romantic love-- wholeness, fulfillment, satisfaction-- as if it is a higher form of human relating. It's not uncommon for me to hear things like "you just can't know yourself fully until you've had this type of relationship." I agree that c...

(rediscovered poetry constructed from the first words of my journal entries over five months in 2011) Life:     Yesterday, church.     Monday, hope.               We... speckled rocks just                         another all today                              walked                         God, God,            today a slow earthquake       Yesterday, today: love full/             spent                     today confusion     a "Our Father" interfaith somehow     Last yesterday, God.                Yesterday I, "Maria." (many)     Last, endless. ...

I just spent two weeks on a road trip that felt charmed, full of serendipitous encounters, human connection, discoveries of histories and new vocabularies and self-revelations. The come down from travel is always swift, like losing your breath, the wind suddenly knocked out of you. I find myself standing still again, alone in my childhood bedroom, the wind tossing the back-lit leaves outside my window, black imprints against a glowing gold-grey sky. The music is off. The aftermath of my travels strewn across my bed waiting to be put back into place. The companionship of a friend on the road, the wildness, the adventure, the sense of anticipation and the magic that seemed to touch every thing is dissipating. It is days like this I want to love with my whole being, to be alive in the fading afterglow of wonder, to not seek the voices crossing the invisible web to shatter my solitude, but to press into this-- to press into me-- myself caught up to me and falling about my shoulders, su...

We sit in a hallway in a circle of wooden chairs, beyond the correctional officer's desk, the door is open to the slow, steady rainfall that is hushing the outside world. We talk, in Spanish and English and Spanglish about power, about violence, about the possibilities that exist to change a situation, to intervene. We talk about the complications of status, of parole, of the systemic racism that erases the option of calling the police, of white privilege. We talk about what makes us defensive and we practice listening and expanding our empathy over and over. It isn't easy. We sit and we describe a time we've been a victim. We describe a time we've manipulated or exploited others. We remember, we reflect, we practice communicating and working through frustrations and we play. I always forget how much play builds trust and companionship. We laugh-- and for a few transcendent moments we aren't in a prison but a community. Conflict still makes my heart beat fast and ...

This "intermission" period has been the gift I didn't want-- wide gashes of time and the salt of loneliness. A few weeks ago, I went to a doctor's appointment and checked off too many boxes on the depression/anxiety analysis checklists leading to gentle questions about my state of being. I assured my doctor, and myself, that this was temporary, due to transitions and boredom. Yet, I teared up walking home feeling overly sensitive to kindness and the strange weight that feelings gather when they're named and spoken. Melancholic states have been a consistent shade of my moods. I recently spent some time reflecting and perusing old journals and realized I started writing about sadness when I was ten, and it was born from the sparks of boredom and loneliness. Though there are multiple components, I have been finding calm in faith that there is meaning enough in the ordinary.  I haven't yet articulated for myself how but I learning a deeper honesty within mysel...

I'm trying to learn about a lot of things and engage in living more deeply and fully in body, mind, spirit, and ecology and to more intentionally share about those discoveries. Premonitions: January 5th The cards said, "sometimes we all, like Salmon, must backtrack upstream to the headwaters, returning to source."  I feel most clear-headed when I am not trying to pursue a conventional path. There are many roles in life and I think mine tips towards edges, fringes, toward the imaginable re-narrating. My imagination was captured by Catholic Workers, creative non-violence,writers playfully and seriously crafting the stories they needed to bring into existence, by direct action and long-haul social movements. My life has gravitated towards programs, living in communities that are daring the failure, that are leaning into uncharted paths-- my world has always hinged on the fantastical, the spiritual, the literary, the radical. These spaces unearth in me a centering that...