February 16, 2009 @ 6:52am

It's Monday morning. good morning life! My soul looks back in wonder and wonders. These words come from an old gospel song, I love gospel music. I love the way the music picks you up and takes into the arms of God where I feel swaddled in the power of God's infinite love. Church music is what I normally used to call it because that was my only point of reference, I remember the shock and disappointed I felt when I learned that other people went to church but did not partake in the same intensity of music. Actually I felt sorry for them, I recognized what they were missing and wondered if this was why they would never enter the kingdom of heaven. Gospel music seemed like a transporter to God, the direct flight, the non-stop, the express or surely the simplest straight-away. Music was the living force for me on most days, the air that kept my soul alive, it quenched the aches and it made me whole. It has always been the sound of the music coupled with the words. Sometimes the words challenged me and mostly the words of gospel songs seem full of dis-empowerment, a kind of rolling over to a life of suffering with the only hope of joy happening in the by and by or what is affectionately referred to as heaven. I loved gospel music but I was not going to settle for joy in heaven, I wanted at least some of that unspeakable joy right here on earth.
I struggled with God as male, I felt the holy spirit was more encompassing and more expansive than that. It made no sense why women could deliver the message or bring the good news. I questioned many traditionally held beliefs and was told I was too smart for my own good. It was chalked off to the fact that I lived in Ann Arbor, the town of hippies and liberals but more importantly white people. I never understood the envy and jealousy that my church friends had for me. I thought I was just different, I talked white and not black enough although I was too smart. The notion of being too smart had caused me to pause. I knew that it was a great concern for adults and I knew that there were times when I knew more than some adults. To find yourself more knowledgeable than adults puts you in an awkward position but more overly it makes you suspect of adults. What it did for me was create a level of disappointment, a kind of sense of betrayal and spun me into a feeling of instability because if the adults around me are not as smart as I am, then who do I go to for more information or who to I goto to ask questions or who do I go to who can protect me.
This whole black, white, church, worldly stuff was pervasive throughout my childhood. My world was constantly spinning like a tornado, much like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, I felt as if I landed in some strange land and all I needed to do was find the right way to get back home. I never got back home but home became the library, more overly books became the way I reached some place that I could think of as home. School and the act of learning was definitely tempered with the feeling of being at home. Playing outside, communing with nature was a surefire way for me to know home and take comfort in my locale which in my mind was only temporary. Church never felt like home but the music was a carrier of information about home, a kind of whispering in the ear, a friendly and melodic reminder of the essence of my real home, the place where I belong, the destination of my soul and the whereabouts of a place where I fit in. Fitting in was never a feeling I got to experience growing up and it hasn't exactly come as in my adult life. Although there were many days when I lived in Washington, DC, thats when I felt this sense of belonging without judgment, I felt as if I had arrived to the place of my soul, a place where I was okay just the way I was and there were people who loved me just the way that I was without any need to change a single thing about me. I do recall feeling at home on the beach in California or Provincetown. The water has a tendency to speak to me but it is mostly the oceans. I love mermaids, the thought of living in water and coming to land every now and then. That's what life feels like to me, I live in the sea of my own uniqueness and I go out into the world every now and then.
I've decided to not give up on my pursuit of love for another human being. Said human is not exactly responding the way I would predict but there is something in me that doesn't want to give up, something in me that doesn't want to run and hide, something in me that says keep the faith and something in me that needs to fight or at least needs to keep options open without judgment or critique. There is something inside of me that wants to be better, more patient, more willing to take a chance on this individual, to pass along compassion and understanding and to present as pure love. Everything in me is holding out for something better and it may not work out but I'm one hundred percent sure that either way I am going to come out on the other side a much better person, I'm going to come out on the other side knowing love more profoundly and I am going to be alright. It's been a long time since I have wanted to give another human being besides my children all of me and it's been a while since I have wanted to simply accept another in all of their glory and non-glory. I'm not interested in changing people but I'm interested in showing for love, friendship and stillness. I want to enact these spiritual principles for real with a live person and experience the ectasy of being Godly, being all loving, being the peace, being in the moment. To watch something unfold without wanting to concoct or control or critique. To be in the midst of enfoldment of growth in self and the sharing of that oneness with God and another. It's not complicated, it's very simple, very in the moment.
To not give up on another is more of an act of not giving up on me. It is my way of honoring what is true to my spirit and allowing that truth to manifest in whatever form it is meant to take. It is also a chance for me to return to that place when I was a young girl, the carelessness I had when I loved someone, the openness of that love and the tripping an falling all over the love. Yeah, my heart my sing a sad love song but my heart gets to sing because my mind has been banging out some dreary monastery chant with miserable results and I'd prefer unabashed vulnerable love than this compartmentalized protective living plan I've been engaged in for the last too many years. I's rather fall on my face, be embarased, have another story of unrequited love than not. Living means just that, living. I can live life fully if I am constantly standing on the sidelines of love and relationships, I can't partner with someone when I'm in a one-seater and I definitely can't be in a relationship if I'm afraid to reveal who and what I am. I make a water toast to being junior highish about love, to bask in the innocence of loving another soul and to celebrate on the swing-set of life the ups and downs of getting to my soulmate. Or what I refer to as the soul I choose to mate with.
I am perfect and I am whole and I am complete. I LOVE ME!