when no woman breaks

Photo:  "Rosa" used with gratitude and by permission of guest artist, Katherine Caldwell, aka Katie Swift.

i see

this:

—face of god

when no

woman     

breaks

      ~

when only

this hand    

of grace

& none

    must run

      ~

when      whether

she          has carried

sons

or   

water

her feet

—no longer      bound

her head

—held high      uncovered

she        will walk

her own       way

      ~

her back     

—undone

her mouth

—white fire

her hips

—wide

& full

of promise

what seems right may be wrong

Art "out where even the imperfect is perfect" used with gratitude to and permission of the artist, Bebe Butler.
Engage more of her work on her website, here.

What if being present to what is and following the flow of it is the way?  What if there is no one "right" way?  What if this way of being is the one thing we must learn?  What if all the details are nothing but distraction?

Read my article in response to an article by Xie Bangxiu on the teaching-learning pedagogy he calls "FEELS," the way, as he states, to "own wisdom."

fresh water wash me clean

    "Rain Dance" photo used with permission & with gratitude to the artist, Lynne Raspet.

i don't live 

in a neighborhood 

Ms.

he says      insisting

nothing happens 

on my street   

this thick   city

boy 

uniformed

scrubbed

polished

& sent to school

his black hair      stiffened

stands at attention

his head     is hurting 

(i am sure)

from too much

sitting still

     ~

i lean into

his round face 

willing words 

his imagination

—a phantom—

     ~

how many       of you 

have ever made 

mud pies

between     your toes   

a few hands       rise

—confessing 

actual play 

outside

go home      i say
turn on the hose 

make mud

they giggle

     ~

my toes          flex 

stretch their necks  

i am standing 

knee deep 

in rain water

this sky     wiping its eyes 

dim thunder     rumbling   

we     have all 

come outside 

waving—squawking birds 

converging     on a makeshift lake 

water      running to greet us

we wade in

     ~

a few fat drops

hit     shower us wet

—cold    clothes 

cling        barefoot toes

stomp 

splash

 sing in the street

—rain dance

 —glee club 

goose bumps  

     ~ 

i squat      squish mud 

between my toes 

shovel up a clump 

—oozing earth

fling it 

at the first    (unsuspecting)

one of us

a burst of laughter

—splat—

a flinched face

—splat—

an arched back

i got you!   

     ~

we are merciless 

     warriors      taking aim 

duck 

dive 

slip 

slide

run 

from each other 

like we     might really

die

in seconds 

      an hour passes 

      ~  

my breath 

comes fast

i am full 

of fun 

& covered 

in baking clay

     ~

lying down 

on long      green 

grass      in the gutter 

bent           under

this sudden stream

    fresh water 

—wash       me clean

If you want to know why

Here we are, poised, as if nothing is wrong.  

It's Easter Sunday.  I wear my new bonnet and white patten leather shoes.  I hold a rose I have just cut from the bush behind us.  Dad is an avid gardener and the bush is lush with blooms.

Mom is thin, thinner than I have ever seen.  I think she looks beautiful and I love my new dotted-swiss Easter dress.  Mom makes sure I have a brand new dress every Easter Sunday.

In a while, we'll go to church.  We are Bapitst.  We'll sit on the third row where we sit every Sunday, Daddy by the aisle, then Mama, then me.  I'll have to pay attention because Daddy will want to know what I heard the preacher say later on.

At home this afternoon, Daddy will grill steak and bake potatoes.  We'll have hot Mrs. Baird's dinner rolls with butter and sweet iced tea.  It'll be so good, my skin will jump up and holler Allelujah!

A month of Sundays goes by and today is Mother's Day.  Daddy took me to the florist yesterday so I could buy Mama a present.  He gave me the money I could spend and he sat in the car.  I bought an orange miniature rose bush in an ivory French Provincial vase.  It's plastic not real, but it will last forever.  

After dinner I give her the flowers and she L.O.V.E.S. them.  I'm really proud of myself.  On these kinds of days, I almost feel my skin letting down.  I think maybe I don't need to worry all the time.

But before my food gets through my bowels, I hear it:

     "Stupid Whore!"  Daddy's yelling.

     "Stop it, Gene!" Mama's crying.  And Daddy's pushing her down the hall, stiffing his finger into her breast bone, shoving her shoulder back with the palm of his hand, slapping her face and calling her all kinds of ugly names until she falls.  Then he throws the roses, vase and all at the wall beside her head.

I run to her.  I pick up the roses, their wire roots jutting through green florist's foam.  The whole bush has fallen out, but the vase has not broken.

Fifty years later, taking the gift down from the secretary in my Mother's room, I finger the vase, blow dust off the orange blooms.  

      ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Will you spend $50 to help me help women like my mother become formidable, deny such abuse and thrive? 

Come to my benefit luncheon, book reading and signing at Viva! Books, Jan 11, 2014.  Most proceeds above costs go to benefit the Kendall County Women's Shelter.

Click here for event details.  

Call 210.826.1143 to reserve your space. 

Make a matching donation online here: Kendall County Women's Shelter  
Please mention "Viva! Benefit" when you make your donation.

Being Present with guest artists and commentary

"Three Tongues," Suzanne Copleston.

Image used with gratitude & permission of the artist, copyright Suzanne Copleson, 2013.  All rights reserved. Please visit Ms. Copleston's website here to view more of her beautiful work.


Present Love

Let love come unbidden
  in each moment's unfolding,
  like petals that open up around our feet
  the instant we step upon the ground.

Let us meet others in the present--
  fresh,
         uncluttered--
  our hearts and minds reflecting
  Love's heart and mind.

Let us not diminish into
  small views and perceptions,
  but step into our fullness,
  shaking off the dust of fear,
  separation, and outcome.

We awake in present love.

Desire only to reside there,
  buoyed by awakened sisters and brothers,
  a circle of love that vibrates,
  rippling outward, in a

      constant now.



Guest Poet, Tina Karagulian from her collection Under the Papaya Tree, Black Rose Press, 2013.  "Present Love" used by permission of the poet.  All rights reserved.


Centering Prayer is one way of "waking in present love."  This method, taught by Fr. Thomas Keating, uses a centering word or phrase one chooses for the practice to bring the mind back to the present  and to the practice of contemplation.  I began to incorporate this method into my spiritual practice decades ago after reading Fr. Keating's book, Open Mind Open Heart.

Microcosmic focus on beauty is another way of being present and awake, as in this photograph.  The artist, Georgia O'Keefe is said to have stated (paraphrased) that no one sees a flower, really.  

In her poem, Ms. Karagulian urges us to "let love come unbidden."  This line is most interesting to me as I have spent a good amount of energy throughout my life calling love, seeking love, practicing unloving behavior and calling it love.  

In other words, being consumed by what is not Love, because as this poet suggests, Great Love comes unbidden.  It simply is.  

And it is fully present to us by grace when we awake.


D. Ellis Phelps

I. WAS. SHOCKED!

Photo courtesy of Samm Cox via Creative Commons; some right reserved.

In late July this summer, I hit the floor--throwing up.  Now this is an event I wouldn't usually choose to share publicly.  Bear with me.

After wet towels, a failed attempt at using a  ten year old suppository drug for nausea (yes, my bowels had joined the circus), and several hours of said event:  me, unable to get up, shaking uncontrollably, and with no signs of bodily control forthcoming, I begged my befuddled hubby, Earthman, to take me to the emergency room.

We arrived at the newly constructed Baptist Emergency Hospital in under ten minutes.  This is the hospital we trusted.  This was our hospital of choice. This was the CLOSEST hospital.  

As I could barely speak, Earthman asked the receptionist, "Do you take Blue Cross Blue Shield?"  This is the name of the company to whom we pay almost $2,000 per month for health care coverage. We have a PPO, which means we can choose our preferred provider from the insurance company's list of in-network providers without asking permission from a primary care doc.  We also have a $2,500 annual deductible for each of us.  I never meet this deductible.  This expense equals approximately $29,000.00 annually out of our pockets.

I cannot say enough good here about how quickly and carefully the nurses and doctor on call helped me to feel better.  After I'd given blood for routine lab work, urinated in a cup, answered a hundred questions between gags (do you know when you had your last tetanus shot?), absorbed two intravenous bags of normal saline and some very effective anti-nausea meds into my bloodstream, used every warm blanket they had in the warmer, and tried to keep the violent chills that assuaged my body from levitating me off the gurney for several hours, Earthman drove me home.

Thirty days passed.  The familiar "explanation of benefits" from our beloved insurance company came in the mail  I'm thinking, Betcha I met my deductible this time.  Wrong.  They had processed my claim as though I'd received services from an out-of-network provider.  The amount "I might owe the provider" line read:  $6,851.37.

I. WAS. SHOCKED!

Here's the point:  we had failed to ask the receptionist the right question.

The question all of us must remember to ask and tell all of our family members to remember to ask no matter what crisis or emergency we are facing is this:  

ARE YOU AN IN-NETWORK-PROVIDER & IS THE DOCTOR AN IN-NETWORK PROVIDER?

I picked up the phone and dialed Blue Cross.

Claims Rep:  "It's all about the codes.  See?"

Me:  "Well.  No.  I was throwing up my eyeballs."

Claims Rep:  "Because they are so new, the provider you chose did not file and become an in-network provider until three days after your visit."

Me:  " Isn't there a way to grandfather this visit in?  Remember how we used to change our grades from a C to a B?  Just takes an eraser and some balls!"

Claims Rep: "Ask the hospital billing department if they have another provider number under which they can submit this claim.'

Me:  "Huh?"

Claims Rep: "Plus they did not classify your visit as an emergency."

Me:  "It's an emergency room.  It says Emergency Room in bold, cobalt blue, neon lights right on the side of the building.  Plus, IT WAS AN EMERGENCY!"

And so the conversation went with the claims rep and then the same with the hospital billing rep who was quite helpful and finally understood that I was suffering from a pronounced panic attack and needed her immediate attention.  She agreed to appeal the claim and would talk to the codes person about what codes they could use instead that would change the outcome of my "explanation of benefits."

I don't know how it worked, but it did.  I now owe the hospital roughly $850.  I'll have to finance this stomach ache, but I'm okay with that. 

Here's what is not okay: that the emergency room intake person did not instantly say, "Yes, we do take Blue Cross but we are not yet an in-network provider" and further explain what that would mean to us before they offered me treatment, further giving me directions to the nearest in-network provider emergency room.   Also not okay:  that the insurance codes are not clear and can be manipulated and are so nebulous in their interpretations so as to potentially cost me $6,000.00.

The fine print:  all of this is my responsibility to know.  When I am well and before I seek treatment, I am supposed to read every term and condition (how many times have you clicked "I agree" without reading these?) of every policy I own or contract I sign.  In this case, I am also supposed to make a list of preferred in-network providers and hang it on the frig with my list of meds or carry it in my purse and then when I am deathly ill and perhaps my caregiver is beside himself with worry, I am supposed to remember said lists.

Okay.  Will do.  God forbid I'm unconscious.

beside this road

vultures 
come    and go

what follows

swarm
&      stench

hollow 

cage

crouching

beside this road

later      the hogs
will come     & take

these     remains