the transformative moment

2007, Lancaster, Pennsylania

The only jewelry she is wearing
is a silver chain

Jesus is hanging from it
with a pained expression on his face
She smiles at me and takes my hands in hers

“Welcome! We’re so glad you’re here,” she says
And i almost believe her
then i realize she is the type who would
cross the street just to avoid passing me
on the same side
The type who would
clutch her purse
close to her anorexic frame

Oh my

“God is doing such awesome things here,” she says

She talks with her eyes closed
and opens them only when each sentence is complete

i smile politely as she squeezes my hands
and tells me how God spoke to her
as she sat behind me during the service
He told her she needed to speak to me
“So here I am now!” she says,
I waited till pastor Ted was finished and then I came right on over.
Must be your first time here? Welcome!”

Her eyes open again and i realize she’s asked me a question.
(i’m slow)

As i prepare to open my mouth to respond,
she’s already turned around
to find this friend
or that

Duty

She finds her and waves furiously
at a fat lady in a green dress

This is something i remember.

Every morning you have been given
another gift.
A day.

Your song, the song of your ancestors,
carries past their night
Through you.

Use your voice to amplify it.

We will watch
the seeds you have planted
Come to fruition
And grow into mighty baobabs
(it will not be as good as watching you shake the earth’s dust
But our watching will make us into participants in such a necessary act)
When we turn tears into seeds.

Will it  be as good as it was watching your life unfold
And grow
And grow
In the struggle for peace through justice?

No.
Womanist.
No.

The beautiful ones are born
Yet not, not yet
We
Are never ready for them
Or ready to let them go when earth calls them back
But in this moment all we have left is to celebrate your transition to an ancestor
How can we not celebrate a life lived with extravagant care for earth?
All we can do, Amai, is to celebrate

We must learn to
Mourn as seeds take plant
and learn us how to birth life into a broken world.

a lamentation

Finally I fully understand.
I know why my spirit protects itself
from what it must protect itself from

After all this time
I know
why it protects itself from the things
that are home
and the things that are love

The things that make me angry
and sad –
I will live with them
because the rain of joy comes only
when you become alive

the people who i love will love me
and those who love me will love me anyway
(they make my heart smile)

Let us blink our eyes together and pretend:

Here is religion.
Here is yours and here is mine.
Is it possible for us to have two separate conversations with G-d that are sacred?
Is it possible for us to love the space between us in a way that allows for the definition of G-d to sink between the gaps of our understanding?

For its own sake,
I hope my heart will forget the way it felt
when you said
I am not ready for us to deal with “this” now
If not now, tell me when?

We’ve been having this conversation for years whether you recognize it or not.

[your two spirits aren't in our culture but i will love you
anyway]

Let me tell you,
Where, how, and who our people are,
there must be a sacred space
where we all can meet and
where all of us are left whole
after the encunter

i beg of you,
umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu (A person is person only through other people)
We must make us whole
My heart overprotects itself

you have caught me in the dirty dance of my heart protecting itself
from being shattered

I am sorry for the moments where i have held myself back from you

I just know what I can bear
and I know what i cannot

this poor heart doesn’t really believe in “I love you [comma] but….”

Love has no qualifiers

Photograph by Douglas Beasley

Rwandan/ Ugandan/ American singer Somi at her live album release celebration at Le Poisson Rouge, New York City, NY
August 9th, 2011
“Enganjyani”

“The secret of the Great Stories is that they have no secrets. The Great Stories are the ones you have heard and want to hear again. The ones you can enter anywhere and inhabit comfortably. They don’t deceive you with thrills and trick endings. They don’t surprise you with the unforeseen. They are as familiar as the house you live in. Or the smell of your lover’s skin. You know how they end, yet you listen as though you don’t. In the way that although you know that one day you will die, you live as though you won’t. In the Great Stories you know who lives, who dies, who finds love, who doesn’t. And yet you want to know again. THAT is their mystery and magic.”
— Arundhati Roy (The God of Small Things)

an updated Transformative Moment…