a drawing of a woman facing the light

Woman facing the light
I have not given you all that you are due,
I have gruffly pulled you out of my chest and smeared you onto newsprint
The dishes on my counter are starting to smell funny
The baby will be up from his nap
And whatever it takes, I swear there will be delicious chicken Alfredo and broccoli to feast on tonight,
I will light a candle and buy some white wine, and make desert in the toaster oven because the oven is
Toast and because my patient husband has patiently borne one too many scrap and leftover dinners
For most of the week.

Woman facing the light
I have not given you all that you are due
Frankly because I don’t know how, I have never been one to tame and refine skill.
I just wanted you here quickly, like an impatient toddler waiting
To be loved and nursed and released back to her business

Woman facing the light
I feel like in your far away home,
That lives deep in the earthy core of my center
God is a lovely lady
That is dignified and strong and picks up our scattered prayers
And breaks down when the babies are crying
Perhaps even wears an intense expression
Like this Woman facing the light.

raining

Tonight it's raining raining raining. Don't be saddened by my sadness, I swear tomorrow I'll be hopeful and strong. For tonight the streets are wet, wet, wet. There is a big twinkly tree in the square. The teens are laughing and jumping in the paddle rink. What the hell is this place? So much love and joy and shit and agony. There is a boy in the bus shelter, he has long straggly hair. She pretends to understand him and he carries on about studying film and loving Westerns, American Self-Determination, he loves the style, he has to catch the bus, she is standing there, left soaking in all of it. I feel tired by it all. Not just the long haired student, all of it, the whole scene, the tree, the teens, myself, it all seems kind of pathetic, and I know I am sad. This city is drenched tonight. I'm thinking of a Gandhi-style hunger strike. A fast, I guess. Until all the dark water dries up and we are laughing and spinning, spinning, spinning, in the sun, our fingers grasped, our palms clasped. Do you remember the rings I bought for us, when we were teenage girls? "Best friends" engraved in blue petals. There were flowers everywhere that year. On the jean pockets, on the print t-shirts, on the purses, bell-bottoms reminiscent of the 60s. Mummy thought they were so funny. Do you remember how we were going to get an apartment together? When we were twenty, in the far far future. I can't make this fucking rain stop. I had to say it, I am sorry. But standing here, in this bus shelter, pretending not to care that everything is getting ruined by the water; fighting to save them when I can't do a thing to salvage our fabrics. And all the while listening to the oblivious chatter about nothing. Do you remember that "midsummer night's dream" play by the Older Girls at Potch? What about the night we sang "Shepard of My Soul?". We harmonized and it was our moment to feel special. Do you remember hiking at Ngong Hills? Or the Stop over in Amsterdam? Do you remember Mummy drawing the cross in the flour before mixing it into the boiling water? Do you remember our room with the big window and the bright yellow walls? And laughing, at night, before bed, until our belly's hurt and we got into trouble. Look outside, I think, It's stopped raining for the night.



"By the waters of Babylon, there we sat down and wept, when we remembered Zion."


Psalm 137:1

autumn and a garden

From the last two weeks of August I have had an unexpected gift of being home with my darling one and a half year old son daily. Today during his nap I had some thirty minutes of standing around our young wild looking vegetable garden that consists of some herbs, twigs, weeds, two determined strawberry plants, a cheerful crowding of cherry tomatoes, and a few leafy plants of Kale permited to grow by protective thistles that triumphed over little hungry garden visitors.

In months of mid-summer, when the afternoon is very quiet, one can find herself swatting away at boredom, or even less welcome, the looming buzz of lonliness. But solitude and quiet in the Fall is a comforting mug of cider. The earth is a cathedral of orange and red stainglass and silence calls the heart to mystery and adoration. Things are whole in the Fall, beauty and death have found each other in a lovely mandola and we know that if the earth has done it, it is okay to surrender.

I also have been appreciating the way in which this small vegetable patch crouched beside the deck has grown a personality in recent weeks. It's expanded beyond an amature attempt to grow something in the suburbs, or hasty trips to the garden centre, or even kind advice at the office. With foilege drying up in preperation for the sacred ritual of dying, it has taken a kind of enchanted posture toward the world, one of having always been, knowing old secrets.

I am thankful for this garden and the manner in which caring for it invites me to a greater awe for the beauty that surrounds me. Beauty that is a Good Creator, and the loving man in my life. Beauty that is in my little son, his wild looking curls. He too has grown a personality in recent weeks and taken an enchanted posture towards his world. My heart is filled with mystery and adoration.

red, insatiate

Should we not now be emerging
From that merciful sustaining fog
That allowed us enough sagacity
to bring jerry cans and cooking pots to the pump
To care for toddlers.
To vote.
To rush about and build this our Land and Nation.
To roll out the red cloth for the dignitaries
with arms full of capital investments.

For when the rooster called out that
the night had walked away and day had come to this village.
There were tasks that had to be done.
It was 1957, it was 1963,
The dark had been long, and it was good to be standing.
Dashing about, fighting, churching
and sleepwalking to keep this village running.

But now we are awaking,
One by one, group by group
We are emerging to the pounding shriek,
There has been a rape!

Intruder in our village,
Moved through windy dark air
Ravaged, Stole, Stabbed.
Took stories from the chests of dreaming children,
Placed Jerry cans in the grip of sleeping mothers,

We are awaking,
Rising and falling,
Harrowing wails,
Steadily fastened hands and souls,
Pouring red
Insatiate.

Shaking Hands

Shaking hands,
We have talked and passed each other by,
But yet to have a formal greeting
I am the grandchild, the child of the postcolonial generation!

All grown up, all by myself.
We won’t touch on my father and mother.
Funny we should meet here though…on your playground, with your rules.

It’s fitting that we should be watching your children on the swings,
Me and you standing here, hands clasped behind our backs,
exchanging ideas….
Yes, I do speak eloquently! Never-mind that scar, it shouldn’t be a problem.

Don’t look so uneasy, I’m not here to destroy you.
Have a sit. Look me in the eye.
That’s a good idea, let us appeal to the dead and bring them to the table.
Let us talk to my dead as well.

Look at the time, my brother and sister will be waiting for me.
He is posted at the Corrections Centre and Studies at your University, She lives at Social Services and eats at the Church on Smith and Mill, He works at the Reserve and she frequents Immigration, we thought we were strangers, connected only by systems and institutions, until it was clear that I am the child, we are the grandchildren of the postcolonial generation. All grown up. All by ourselves.

You have a strange look in your eye, you must be remembering,

My mother

and my father.

Well, same time tomorrow!

Read

Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Child Lyrics

here.

I simply come

okay, i'm going to keep it raw on this one, there is no drawing or pretty poem. Just me sitting on my living room floor during Babu's nap time listening to Matt Redman's Heart of Worship, a long time favorite song. It's all in the second lyrics of the first verse:

"When the music fades, and all is stripped away, and I simply come.."

That is something of what I feel right now, not because I'm in the depths of despair or suffering. Quite the contrary I know I'm blessed. I have a wonderful son, a good husband, an air conditioned living space, a dishwasher and a B.A from a private University (I'm still working out if the private university part is blessing or a curse seeing as i am up to my neck in debt) but I guess the point is that for all the shit that is out of place, I know that I am blessed.

However, there is the small and big things (depending on my mood and perspective from day to day) that are in fact seemingly out of place. I still can't seem to get hired in my area of passion and training, I'm struggling to get through a post B.A degree while juggling child care, bills, etc. I can't stay on top of the dishes or my debt and God knows I'm trying.

I'm living in two realities right now, on one hand I'm blessed and at shalom. On the other hand I feel anguish and frustration at messed up plans and deep disappointments in relationship, convictions, and aspirations. A Woman Guide and Professor that I had during undergrad would describe this as "holding the tension of the opposites". It sucks but apparently produces some kind of significant insight...we'll see!

The thing that makes me crazy is that sometimes I feel that I have all the answers. I mean, I don't even know what to ask, because the answer seems obvious. There was a time that I just thought I could be happy if all my problems were solved. If my husband didn't disappoint me anymore and I learned to be a better wife. If I became a better mom and mastered a healthy routine and got Babu to eat a pea or a carrot (God help that child), if I finally woke up before Izaka did and jogged around the pond by the park, if I got my long awaited amazing job changing the world, cleaned the basement, paid my debt....

and then the good creator just kind of showed me that the list was endless and that live was short. So now it seems my whole effort is trying not to get tangled by the list.

And some days are a success...sunshine, peace, contentment, shalom and a sense of being one with the Creator. I love my boys and I'm thankful for my life....

Here's the problem, something from that list always seems to still creep up...it's not as easy as doing away with the list, the list matters, I do have to clean the house and think up creative ways to make my one year old develop a deep appreciation for veggies, and I will always want to get that dream job as a community worker...it would be much easier if I could shut myself up in a monastery of profound drawings and serene prose....(and from time to time I can and I'm glad I do) But sooner or later I have to exist in this here garden in which the creator has placed me...it is a cursed place and a ransomed place.

It's like my flower bed out front...sooner or later the weeds always push out of the soil and threaten it's beauty and the wellness of the plants.

To be quite frank in recent weeks I've kind of taken a break from maintaining the flower bed upfront, I'm too tired and at this point it's not a priority. I'm glad our Good Gardener doesn't get tired or demotivated. He always thinks me beautiful and sees much reason to till away and strip away.....until, I simply come.

Whom Shall I Fear?

"The feeling remains that God is in the journey, too". (Saint Teresa of Avila)

When I was very small I used to take the early bus home. The school day ended at Lunch for young pupils in standard one and two. I would ride alone in the hour long Nairobi city bus and then alight at the white gates of the Seminary school where my parents worked and studied. There was a long red dusty road between the gates of the school and the living accommodation compounds, as the years went by and I got bigger I learned to brave the walk on the dusty long red road, but at five and six, the dread of missionary dogs in compounds that lined the road and aggressive cow herds that often shared the road and forced little children into the ditches was far to intimidating.

My mother was sensitive to my fears and always sent our live-in-care-giver that we knew and loved as our Auntee to meet me at the bus stop. In the heat of midday, I can still picture a uniformed smaller me, with a canvas knapsack hanging from both shoulders. I remember taking a rather high jump from the bus into a cloud of red dust that was created from the aggressive giant wheels of a bus starting off. The bus would soon disappear down toward Dagoretti Market, taking with it a heavy smell of metal and petrol.

Auntee leaning against a fence just beyond the white gates could always quicken my tired feet, she was home and Shalom, a sight of protection after being small and overlooked in the harsh bustle and push of the crowded city.

If we are blessed (and I hope most of us have to some extent been blessed in this way) we have known the magic persistence of a womanly kind of guardianship. You can feel it in the firm hold of a kanga that wraps a toddler to the chest of a mother or perhaps from the fingertips of an aggressive typist in some building uptown at 6pm on a weekday, mothering community change.

Chinua Achebe, the notable African (Nigerian) writer argues that "stories create people create stories". I would agree. My narrative has formed who I am becoming and that which I choose to invite the world to share in through story. My story has included the persistent guardianship of a Womanly Creator who has met me on this healing path, and She has held me.

Whom shall I fear?

	Matt Redman - You Never Let Go .mp3
	Found at bee mp3 search engine