Ale La (Go There)

How can we describe the moments where we feel the stillness permeate our bones and yet understand that we are moving forward? Like a sailboat all unfurled, gliding across the water, its substance holds it and anchors it while the invisible wind pushes it forward. Such is the present moment. Like peripheral vision we are aware that something has shifted, but if we move our gaze, if we wander, the moment will pass. Recently this knowing  hit me as my brother and I drove along the coast at sunset. The golden haze of light illuminated each car on the highway and entered each pore of skin. Time had stopped. Yet, magically, we all moved forward. And again it landed as I watched an inchworm traverse the violet, fluffy orb of a garden flower. The substance of a memory held and the movement of the worm, slow and deliberate, surprised me. Words echoed, no they rippled, the effect bounced back again and again, with the cadence of my tiny green friend. "Amanda, just because you can handle som...

I had two cases of elder abuse on my case load last week, and somewhere in my processing wrote this. The cycle of violence hurts and seems to keep on turning. Yet, I still rest in Hope. If we can all get out of our god complexes and ask for grace and help...There. Just. May. Be. Hope. Dear ____, Sometime last week you might have hit your mother as she lay there dying, illness claiming her body, sightless in both eyes and demanding, SO demanding. Her imperious voice echoed through the house as she ordered you to pull her up in bed, to adjust her pillow, to change her diaper. I say "might have" because she could be lying too, a lying and manipulating mother, who seems to be clutching on to that last bit of control she has over life and over you. She has been dying for a long time, perhaps too long, perhaps just long enough. You threatened her for reasons unknown to me, but I can speculate. You threatened her because she and your father hit you, because aggression ...