A million opportunities For me to be A million different people Who were never me Negative one Plus infinity Makes me less than the man I’m supposed to be Made like the Creator Supposedly But show up in my power They’re opposed to me The essence of the One Is meant to flow in me And flow inside of you Hopefully But we’re taught not to try To live in a lie See ourselves as less The higher us we deny On earth as in Heaven I see it so clearly While the Logos Way Is disappearing We’re called to show love But we’re steady fearing Wanting to escape We hope the end is nearing But we’re back in the beginning There’s no loss and no winning Reality is virtual So we’re virtually sinning Missing every mark Too fast and no aiming Preaching to the choir Is so spiritually draining But here is my thesis We’re stuck in mimesis Copying the bound So we don’t know what free is It’s not supposed to be this Leaders who just hinder Taking advantage Because your souls are so tender Don’t knock, but still enter Hypocritical mind splinters So consistently cold It’s like perpetual winter Frozen in place Condemning with no Grace Filled with emptiness Like a room with no space So come face to face Breathe the Breath of the Living Surrender everything To be eternally giving Take part in the Whole Out of the many become One A million choices become choiceless Now the ego trip’s done
Listen Without words To what can only be spoken With Silence There is no loss There is no gain In the Place where Love is Home Like the top of the inhale And the bottom of the exhale Where in and out are One And coming and going cease to be There resides the thought That tells you what you already know You are more than enough And worthy of all Creation Here is where In Silence you hear The Voice of the voiceless Noiselessly shouting Everything I Am Is Communicating To Everything You Are Telling You Once and for All We have Everything We need When We have each Other
Grief is a midwife, giving birth to who we’d never be without loss’ seed. Realizing that you’ll never again be who you used to be makes room for who you are becoming So let yourself weep. Be emptied of who you’ve been Because someone wiser, more capable, and more honest is waiting to emerge Everything you held back, waiting for the right time can be released from its temporal prison The time to be who you were created to be is always now And yet, in the realm of human relating, there is always an order First the mother and the father, then comes the child is the way it is written But also true, is that before mother, father, or child took residence in the womb, they were wholly conceived and fully known in infinity BEING from the beginning AND dwelling in time is the Spiritual reality of those who embrace the human reality that in this life we must learn to hold grief in one hand and joy in the other So grieve as you must, tremble with the pangs of rebirth It is the falling away of who you can no longer be So that who you’ve always been can come to LIFE
In my last poem, Higher Dimensions, I mentioned that my friend, Bishop Carlton Pearson was sick. Well, a few days ago on November 19, he died. Since that moment, I have been going through the 5 Stages of Grief by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, M.D. pretty much in exact order and quick succession.
Denial
Anger
Bargaining
Depression
Acceptance
I don’t know if I am going through them in an orderly fashion because I know of them or because they are natural. Either way, I am going through them without resistance and telling everyone that I am meeting up with in person during this holiday season that if I go in and out and look disinterested it is because I am grieving someone I felt very close to.
The Sixth Stage of Grief The poem above is part of the lesser known sixth stage of grief by David Kessler, Finding Meaning. In the text below from Carlton, he was ministering to me in my grief about leaving ministry. But, I find that it is equally applicable for grieving him.
I have been holding back so much over the years because I didn’t feel like I could bear to relive the rejection I received from the Pentecostal church I was a part of years ago. I met Carlton in the height of his rejection and the scarring over of mine. For a season I had easy access to him because many in his life had turned on him. In that time, we talked out all we had endured and marveled at how our lives mirrored each other even down to both of our wives working for airlines and the adventure of flying on standby. It was kind of uncanny. What differed was that he still wanted to go back to the folks who rejected him and make plain what he had not fully been able to articulate at his dismissal. I did not. I only wanted to talk to people who indicated their openness. And that’s where our paths diverged.
Now that he’s gone in the body, I’ve been trying to make meaning of the last couple of years. He was way busier and folks who formerly rejected him started popping back in. He was terribly hurt by Trumpism and how easily evangelicals surrendered to this so called “strongman” and seemingly put him on par with the Christ Carlton loved so much. He was trying to reconcile how he gave so much of his life to that expression of Christianity and how in some ways he felt complicit in many folks, especially Black folks, believing such painful doctrine. He wanted to make up for it. And in that way, he was like a modern day Paul of Tarsus trying to preach his new understanding of Christ.
I totally understood AND I couldn’t get into it with people who didn’t want to meet even halfway. Twice in his life, he gave up everything for his love of God and people. The first time it almost cost him his life. The second time, it did.
Even though I foresee myself writing out a lot of words in my grief processing, words can’t begin to express the contribution this man has been to human evolution in consciousness. I predict that we’ll be discussing him for generations. As for now, I’m going to keep talking to him in my heart and writing my way into who I’m becoming.
I despise the fact that you make me necessary And yet I love you because I’m here But I am pained by watching you on your path Knowing I’m powerless to interfere In your weakness I find my strength Though it is the last thing on my mind Your emptiness gives me a place to fill But this too will end with time In this place we are often seen as enemies In Truth, together we express the One Because you’re insecure, I must show I’m not Just as darkness creates a need for Sun You are my partner that I cannot work with Bound together by what keeps us apart Although we’ll never occupy each other’s space We’ve been together from the start.
In an ocean of sound I lose myself In the cacophony of my Silence My mind is lost among the many more And it feels like I’ll never find it I’ve been me so long that I was convinced That my reality can’t be threatened But all this noise has choked my joys Making the Voice inside seem deafened I forgot what it was I was thinking When your words invaded my space Now whatever it was has slipped my mind And I have completely lost my place I know many people are fine with this They accept the status quo “Don’t question the narrative written for you Because that’s the way it goes” But for as long as I can remember I’ve just been the way that I’m created Seeing only the good in all I can So that my soul is elevated Of course at times I do get tempted These illusions can be convincing People weaving temporal spells With the words that they are mincing I start wondering if I’m too stubborn Maybe I should play the role Let the conformers off the hook And do what I am told Then suddenly it hits me I have no right to disappear Being me is all I can be It’s the very reason why I’m here
We all entered this given world Shining ever so brightly Until we were handed a cloak of shadows And were taught to take our shining lightly The shadow cloaks that we are given Are all different, but the same Put on by people who we’re born to trust But started lying with our name They called us a moniker we didn’t choose That made them feel a certain way Perhaps a projection of someone’s past That we’re expected to display Rather than get to know us And discover who we are They tell us who we’re supposed to be And complain if we stray far But it’s not that I’m trying to blame them They did what they knew to do Because before they projected onto us They were cloaked in shadows too They too were forced into a box Aimed to maintain society They believed the lies that were told to them Before they ever lied to me Some were told the lie that they were best When compared to other people While some were told that they are worst And must forever work at achieving equal But, both these states are lies There’s no one above or below another And the truth is there’s no shadow here That another’s light cannot uncover You see all of us were meant to shine So that this world won’t be in dark And each of us has the work to do Of dissolving shadows with our spark In so doing we don’t just free ourselves We free all who came before Until the world is filled with shining lights Who wear shadow cloaks no more
The truth is they won’t accept you Because you won’t accept that you’re accepted You remind them of the lies they told Because you reflect what they projected The denial of your existence Protects identities that don’t exist And now you want to be like them What part of the message did you miss? Who you are before you’re born Is more true than you can know When you let someone tell you who you are Who has no power to make it so That’s why I live and keep on living Without the dream of keeping score Knowing absence from the body Is Presence with the Lord And by “Presence with the Lord”, I mean I Am Presence too Because the One You Are when You’re with God Can never be taken away from You
You will ask me how I got here In reality, I do not know I surrendered to my brokenness What you see now is emergent flow It is not a part of Creation Since it was before things are The zero point of beingness Collapsing distance from what seemed far Be still and then you’ll know Has nothing to do with stopping Just as rising from the fall Is not a consequence dropping It is more like finally arriving To the place I never left By getting to the “other side” Through borrowing another’s death Now coming back to life I choose to live like I’m twice born Reinhabiting an incarnation Through the veil that has been torn Now when looking through the windows I see what cannot be described To those who breathe like they are living But have yet to come alive This is now the indescribable impetus For everything that’s coming through My actions coming from inaction A human being before I do.
It's All In Me - Poetry Blog 