[ hold :: this space ]

for all who aren’t

Cheryl — Sat, 11 May 2013 00:56:06 +0000

There are few days so cruel
as mothers day

A prayer of love for those who aren’t mothers.
Today may you know all you are.

A prayer of love
for those who decided they wouldn’t
be a mother
because they dared not
for fear they would replicate a world
that tried to destroy them

A prayer of love for those who did
but not by choice
who had decision thrust upon them
and now live searching for a love
that will catch up to their truth

A prayer of love for those who couldn’t
who tried but it never worked

and for those who did,
but lost.

A prayer of love for those who never got the chance to even try
and who with all the other pain that lives inside
today bear the fear of being
someone else’s pity

A prayer of love today for those who hear the word
‘mother’
with resentment, disappointment, guilt
fear, rage, horror,
sadness, ambivalence
grief

a prayer for those who cannot love their mother
or their child
and who no longer have the strength to try

A prayer of love for those who have no day
that speaks their worth
that tells their story
that reminds them they are also gift to the world

A prayer of love for those who aren’t.
Today may you know all you are.

magnetic fields

Cheryl — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 22:51:04 +0000

Last night in a biological psych tutorial we studying magnetic fields produced by the brain. Every connection between neurons in the brain produces an electrical charge [that's every thought, every learning, every choice, every memory]. That’s how we can do EEGs to see what’s happening in the brain. With every electrical charge comes a corresponding magnetic field [that's the rule, apparently]. And although magnetic fields rapidly lose their force, with distance from their source, they never completely dissipate. So every thought and every memory you and I have produced – indeed every thought ever produced – is still living on in an infinitesimal magnetic trace, somewhere in the universe.

Imagine that. Imagine whose memories you are walking in now. Imagine what traces of thoughts and loves and desires are still held in the space you are living. Imagine what thoughts and loves and desires you are leaving for those to come.

My new years’ resolution this year was to be kind wherever possible [it's always possible... and still i fail]. I just wanted to remind myself of that: to live as though my thoughts will be present in the world for the ages to come. Because they will.

enough

Cheryl — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 22:52:42 +0000

holding on only to the promise
that i once was sure of
and trusting that will be enough

[it will]

letting go of the things
i once knew myself by
in the hopes they will live beyond me

[they will]

and sinking into whatever
is to come
in the faith that it will be love

[it will]

that’s enough,
i hear whispered
and it’s all that will ever be.

on crises and catastrophes

Cheryl — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 22:24:09 +0000

I was thinking about crises and catastrophes, while riding my bike into work this morning… Someone asked yesterday, in response to a thing I wrote for Crosslight about easter, why i would call myself a person of faith. I do so because it makes me live differently. Calling myself Christian gives me no choice about how I treat others. And I need that. And may well need it even more over the next few months…

We are what we do.
Who we are is the way we treat other people.

If we choose ‘Christian’ as our identity
and as our community
then we are actively giving up the right to choose how we treat other people.
We are actively giving up the right to pre-judge another person, or a group of people
We are giving up the right to condemn.

We are actively giving up the right to think we are better,
more righteous,
more holy
more wise
more faithful
more humble
than anyone else in our community.

We are actively committing, in every moment, to being people of grace and people of justice.
We are actively choosing mercy and compassion.
We are actively choosing to look for the worth another person brings to our world.
We are actively choosing love. Even when we don’t feel like it. Even when it goes against every part of our being.

We are choosing to believe that everybody’s story is more than what we know of it.
We are choosing to believe that death, hopelessness, despair and fear will not be how we will live.

Some say we are in a crisis. But that’s only true if money is the thing which determines crisis.
If we choose ‘Christian’ as our identity
and our community
then it can’t.
What we do with what we own cannot be what creates our identity.

We will only be in a crisis if we lose who we are in the process.
If we actively choose not to be who we have claimed we are.

just one

Cheryl — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 22:28:57 +0000

I ask for just one miracle this weekend:
that I will no longer believe the impossible is.

That I will find the faith to believe
that liberation will come
for those who are imprisoned by their own
- or another’s -
fear and judgement.

That I will find the faith to believe
that the most intractable minds can be changed
– even my own.

That i will find the faith to believe
a different world will be born
from the empty hells of this one.

That I won’t stop living for the end
of all that would destroy us.

The UK 2013 trip

Cheryl — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 00:57:26 +0000

Registrations are now open for the UK 2013 Greenbelt + more trip. It’s slightly shorter than previous years; I’m pretty sure it’s going to be absolutely brilliant.

I do hope you can come. The information and registration form is here: UK2013infobrochure

all that’s borrowed

Cheryl — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 05:41:51 +0000

We live in borrowed time,
says Lent.

i have lived on borrowed truth for a while
as well,
and borrowed faith when necessary
i know I have taken certainty from places that shouldn’t have given it to me
and probably wouldn’t have, willingly.

I have tried to make it my own.
all of it.
i have given it the names of my gods,
and scratched in deep to its essence my name and my claim
that it’s mine
and it’s me.

i have held it fast with fear and determination,
and close as to make it mine forever

but here now
you ask for it back
and i give it.

the left over shape of a life
and a faith
tarnished, scratched and battered
with the indentations of my clasping
grasping
fingers

and i say
sorry for messing what was beautiful
and
thankyou for trusting me with what’s yours.

Breathing space

Cheryl — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 02:15:29 +0000

Few things fill me with anticipation more than the return of Pádraig Ó Tuama at the end of February, for a 3 month poet-in-residence project with the CFM. He’ll be doing a mixture of in-house and public events – including this 3 day event in Hobart. I hope you can come…

Download information here: breathingspace

we can no longer wait

Cheryl — Sun, 23 Dec 2012 23:25:03 +0000

We have waited
so long

surely forever.

We have lived with the dissatisfaction of a world not right.
We have railed at injustice
and wept with impossible sadness
at love’s failure.

We have been angry, impatient, desperate
fearful
hopeful

waiting for the time this will be different.

Tonight we take a step of faith:

we stop waiting
and we start searching
- as wise ones through ages have searched -
for the flicker of light, already shining,
that shows where love is given life in our world.

Where we would cling to waiting,
make us now ready:
breathe peace into our anger
so we will not crush hope’s fragile birth;
and sing love into our fear
so that grace might find a home
at the inns of unlikely welcome.

We can no longer wait
please make us ready.

‘the real problem is our complacency’

Cheryl — Thu, 20 Dec 2012 02:29:55 +0000

S J Culver writes about doing a tour of Alcatraz:

The reasons for ignoring prisoners are easy to understand: they’ve had a hand, sometimes more, in their fate. As my mother will say to me later, at dinner, by way of indicating she’s had enough of this line of conversation: “Well, I don’t know, those were some pretty bad people who did some pretty bad things.” It is true; prisoners are not usually precisely good. Often they are thieves, murders, rapists, embezzlers, terrorists. Yet we continue to think of ourselves as good when we inflict suffering back on these men and women. A start would be for us to recognize the hypocrisy of our own beliefs.

But first, there must be knowledge. I look at the Hornblower Hybrid flier and ponder the missed opportunities at Alcatraz. Here is one of the few social spaces in the country where people with real political power (those who can vote, have disposable income, etc.) seek out information about incarceration; it’s a disappointment that what they get instead is entertainment. The real problem is our complacency, and perhaps it’s bigger than any tourist attraction could hope to correct. We need politicians who aren’t afraid to voice progressive, even radical, stances. We need prominent religious leaders who preach tolerance and acceptance. We need integrated communities so oppression is not so easily silenced. We need citizens who read and listen and who think critically and pay attention.

It feels like we have taken so many steps backward this year, in terms of the public discourse around criminal justice in Victoria – how we talk about each other, and how we talk about people who have done terrible things.

Here’s to a different year next year. And to having the energy to start it all again.