but we held out our eyes delirious with grace.

Shake Loose My Skin: New and Selected Poems

I’m gonna stay on the battlefield
I’m gonna stay on the battlefield
I’m gonna stay on the battlefield til I die.

i had come into the city carrying life in my eyes
amid rumors of death,
calling out to everyone who would listen
it is time to move us all into another century
time for freedom and racial and sexual justice
time for women and children and men time for hands unbound
i had come into the city wearing peaceful breasts
and the spaces between us smiled
i had come into the city carrying life in my eyes.
i had come into the city carrying life in my eyes.

And they followed us in their cars with their computers
and their tongues crawled with caterpillars
and they bumped us off the road turned over our cars,
and they bombed our buildings killed our babies,
and they shot our doctors maintaining our bodies,
and their courts changed into confessionals
but we kept on organizing we kept on teaching believing
loving doing what was holy moving to a higher ground
even though our hands were full of slaughtered teeth
but we held out our eyes delirious with grace.
but we held out our eyes delirious with grace.

I’m gonna treat everybody right
I’m gonna treat everybody right
I’m gonna treat everybody right til I die.

come. i say come, you sitting still in domestic bacteria
come. i say come, you standing still in double-breasted mornings
come. i say come, and return to the fight.
this fight for the earth
this fight for our children
this fight for our life
we need your hurricane voices
we need your sacred hands

i say, come, sister, brother to the battlefield
come into the rain forests
come into the hood
come into the barrio
come into the schools
come into the abortion clinics
come into the prisons
come and caress our spines

i say come, wrap your feet around justice
i say come, wrap your tongues around truth
i say come, wrap your hands with deeds and prayer
you brown ones
you yellow ones
you black ones
you gay ones
you white ones
you lesbian ones

Come come come come come to this battlefield
called life, called life, called life… .

I’m gonna stay on the battlefield
I’m gonna stay on the battlefield
I’m gonna stay on the battlefield til I die.

Sonia Sanchez -For Sweet Honey in the Rock
Beacon Press (c) 1999 by Sonia Sanchez

does your work become your calling?

or your calling become your work?



discuss.

believe it.

dear carol hyde and the iona community,

i know i wore rain boots and a kerchief all summer. and that i also wore the same clothes and didn't shower or shave and rolled my pants in a horrible fashion.

but when i told you that my favorite pair of shoes were my four inch red stiletto heels and you didn't believe that someone who looked like me could own shoes like those and you asked for photo proof upon my return...

believe it.

so, miss carol hyde, who made me make beds perfectly and wash dishes FASTER ...

these pics are for your dis-believing self.

(and i hope you are MOST wonderful.)

love,

ashley

the peace of wild things.

by wendell berry.


When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

i don't have much wild space here,

but for now, a hot mug of tea in a hipster cafe

or pupusa at a taqueria

will have to suffice.

(and prospect park's not bad, either.)

unacceptable.

one in five u.s. high school girls say they do not know three adults they can turn to if they have a problem.

(girls, inc. 2006.)

a very small state.

i visited THIS couple in rhode island. stayed in their guest room. slept with their dog, chips, who they rescued, and who has the most wonderful case of slight PTSD (meaning, that she just likes to be spooned.)

i walked to marshalls, bought too much champagne, celebrated job and good friends. wrote letters. cleaned a bathroom. watched a romantic comedy alone. emailed a lot of people my thoughts on my hatred of said romantic comedy. forgot to remember that i had emailed said people until i had a full email box the following morning. talked systemic oppression. listened to npr for an entire afternoon while washing dishes barefoot. fell in love with rural massachusetts and the life that my friends are building. now THAT is worth celebrating.

amy refuses to send pictures of herself.

i went to boston to see my friend amy.

and her husband.

and harvard.

and to make pilgrimage to one place of higher learning and feminism and movie location.

and to pick apples.

and to photo shoot.

and to almost miss my bus.

and to have car time.

and to enjoy the love and warmth of a friend who knows me.

boston is beautiful, especially the part

where you get really, really lost with

no forms of electronic communication.

that is the best.

a book.

finally reading it. (a few years late.)

thoughts emerging... we'll see, mr. rollins.

"for christians testify to having been caught up in and engulfed by that which utterly transcends them. in short, the experience that gives birth to faith, at its most luminous, is analogous to the experience of an infant feeling the tender kiss and embrace of its mother."

peter rollins, how (not) to speak of god, pg.1

poorly aligned and badly caption-ed.

mulled wine and drumming on the beach.

walk to the abbey.

stone labryinth at columba's bay.

(below: tea break in the refectory.)

these are the days.

My friend ian left me on the shores of iona when I left. He didn’t want to see me cry (which I didn’t.) because he doesn’t do well when girls cry (he has an emergency protocol when/if such a travesty occurs.). He is an English friend met in Australia who came up to holiday. We explored mull together. (see following posts.)

I was ready to leave iona. Not in the sense that I wanted to bid good riddance, but it was just simply, time.

However, as the significance of the past few days sank in, I put my big, red, plastic sunglasses on that covered half my face and stared intensely into the bottom of my plastic coffee cup from the corner shop as fat, heavy tears rolled down my face. I had an hour before ian’s ferry from iona to mull, and sat, looking at this tiny island, marveling at how such a small space: one mile by three miles, could have so much power and strength.

The night before I was asked to read names for the Tuesday healing service for the laying on of hands. You will just need to ask me about it. It was profound in ways I am currently still unable to express. The strength of intention, coupled with faith and hope are powerful to heal. There was kneeling and their were hands.

Have you ever felt privileged and humbled at the same time? Maybe that’s what this was like.

by the time ian arrived, my face was still sticky with salt, but ready ... for ...

to be sung at communion.

O woman,

Have you forgotten,

Take up your harp,

Play your song often.

O man,

You have forgotten,

Your love is strong,

So forget this wasteland.

I am coming for you.

I am coming for you.

You will see me in this town someday…

And the meal will fill you,

And the wine will calm you,

And the company will remind you

That I see you.

And the meal will fill you,

And the wine will calm your nerves

And the company will remind you

You’re alive and well.

(credit: Sarah Chopee, Canada.)

and yes, sarah, I agree.

a service.

I led a service. On a Friday night. It was quiet and it was intimate. It was uncomfortable, but beautiful. I think.

It might have been one of the first times I ever felt so sure in what I felt like I needed to do. And also, one of the first times I felt scared of a calling.

only one person walked out. So, that, I think, is a good thing.

personalities.

Melody came from ohio. She is thirty seven. She made a decision to go to iona to be open and take a chance. She taught me about body theology and I wish I would risk like her.

Grant is from hong kong. He rolls his own cigarettes and drinks beer from his backpack. He speaks like a posh pom.

Hannah cooks. Better than she lets on about. My roommate, who, from our beds across the room, provoked in me some of the most uncomfortable conversations.

Gabriele is a forty-something from germany who practices zen meditation and writes three pages in her journal from her bed everyday.

Katie takes retreats with Benedictine nuns. She sings prayers in taize and loves silence.

Sarah empowers people to sing. and by people, i mean me. she believes in assertiveness, her field (ethnomusicology), and online dating.

Tom teaches theology to teenagers. He likes to match rubber gloves with size, shade, and brand name.

David has an alter ego called “the green man” who has over 10,000 friends on myspace. He really, really liked dancing on the beach.

Chris is a wandering kiwi whose partner lives in uk while she lives in new Zealand. She is a retured social worker who I would love to be like.

John and joe have a travelling Frisbee routine. They are best friends.

Donna is a singer-actress-reverend. She is vibrant.

Shannon is a truly good woman. She is in undergrad and is developing her own rule of life. She asks great questions.

And there’s a lot more. (please refer to maggie and christina in other posts.)

silence.

In silence I think I hear god speak.

Sunday nights, I feel like I could sit for hours, on choir chairs, enveloped by darkness and candles and draft.

In silence, I feel alone, but not lonely.

I feel comfortable in myself.

And things bubble up from the good spaces within me.

a rule of life.

The “hallowed” members of the iona community were here this week.

I learned much from this small, dispersed, opinionated group of folks: from their activism, their theology, their determination to be together, to not choose each other. They account to each other the use of their time, carbon energy, money, physical energy. They pray a beautiful common prayer every day. They feel called to a life of activism, politics, journeying with god. To being together.

They get arrested. They make pilgrimage to the island once per year. They disagree. They harbor asylum seekers. They write poetry. They inspire me.

What would I want my rule of life to be?

go now, and create.

craft room.

Camas left me with a gift.

A night spent in the camas living room by candlelight and rich hot chocolate listening to guitar and ukelele, tapping a drum and hearing mag’s snappy songs composed in the “boredom of new jersey summers…”

Gave me life.

Life to make candles out of recycled wax.

A dress out of curtain fabric (was a momentary panic when my measurements were still one thigh short of fitting… exclamations: “I am too fat for my own dress! How does that happen?” )

Fifty postcards of paint and justice and peace liturgy.

String of shells and scraps and heather and pebbles to hang over my bed from the wall to the window.

ash & maggie go to camas.

I have returned from camas and am in love.

With creation, life, possibility and beauty (ha. corny.).

We are calling it the camas drug and I can’t stop smiling.

From a ferry ride to a 2 ½ mile asphalt walk, passed mckinsey’s auto shed where diet cokes go for sixty pence, to a half mile walk down a thin plank track in ankle deep bog, camas, in its simple fishery goodness, right on the blue water of the sound of mull, emerges as a well deserved reward for the journey it takes to get there. on our way, we passed friends tom and callie, who were each wheeling wheelbarrows to the road gate to pick up supplies for the week. woah.

we (adventure buddy maggie and i) traded one bit of isolation for another. And it was brilliant.

So, we were shown to our accommodation: a small mongolian yurt erected in the center of camas’ organic veggie patch by becky, the resident gardener and resident lovely person-fairy. The yurt is becky’s. A circular red tent piled high with cushions and enough space for a downward facing dog (no mountain pose) -- strung with a mini glass tea light lantern and opens to cucumbers with mini doors, I am quite positive that I could spend the rest of my days happily in that yurt.

I knitted on the seaside,

Waded into my knees in a flooded saltmarsh,

Talked family and spirit with burly rob,

Played pitch,

Ate veggie dinner with norwegians,

made music by candlelight,

repaired a stone labyrinth,

And was astounded by the simplicity of the chapel of the nets.

Something about those orange fishermens’ nets, piled high like dunes around the found object sculpture of community: defined in anchors and shells, glass plates and rope… pulled together to create a haphazard whole.

A circle of tealights called it sacred.

Maggie is one of my favorite people on iona. She is smart, articulate, quirky, and wears a blue bandana. She focuses on consensus making games and anti-oppressive, peace building programming for children who come to iona (she invented “capture the illuminated manuscript). She was a perfect partner in adventure. And she writes songs. Good songs.

officially linked.

one of my most ancient-est friends, elizabeth, gave me a shout out on her blog.

the only thing is, her blog is cooler than mine and she makes me sound really embarrassing.

(i may or may not have attempted to adjust the theme and format of my blog after seeing hers, which led to the complete and utter aesthetic breakdown you are now viewing live on this blog.)

and no, lizzy, i didn't have the birthday party in the tree house, damnit. maybe for my thirtieth.

nice ones, christina.

town.

abbey internal.

(when its not beautifully, relationally messed up with circles instead of rows for my services.)

looking down from the hill at about 9 pm.

george macloed wasn't exactly a feminist theologian.

we make up for that now.

so i am starting to be a vegetarian, which is normal when...