I have no hand. I have no body. Bodies aren’t real. Bodies are dreams.
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During one of my more active Seeking periods, I took an Anthropology of Religion class at the College of Charleston that was taught by a Jamaican Quaker. You can’t participate in that kind of class without exposing your perspective. What I heard from John Rashford about the Religious Society of Friends intrigued me. So, I read about Friends and started going to Meeting.
The Charleston Friends Meeting is very small. 10 in the room was a good Sunday. We’d go for a month or longer with no on moved to speak. But every time I went, IF someone spoke, s/he spoke to what was in my head/heart at that time.
I never worried about it if I missed it when someone was moved to speak. I was in a groove that let me flow with when I should be there and when following a distraction was … OK. I was there when I needed to be. I heard what I needed to hear.
I flip the switch of this blog, and the other one, off and on as I’m moved. Sometimes I feel exposed having it out here. Sometimes I feel like no one will ever find it unless they “need” something from it.
I learned from Meeting that sometimes all that’s needed is a small thing. A piece of a poem. A prayer. A song. An image. An essay may be right. But my little blips may be, too.
Or not.
Addendum: When I was Quaker, I was moved to speak in Meeting 3 times. It was never optional. As much as I tried to sit still, to refuse that it was my turn, the words demanded to be said. The Universe moves us as it will.
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A story is like water
that you heat for your bath.It takes messages between the fire
and your skin. It lets them meet,
and it cleans you!Very few can sit down
in the middle of the fire itself
like a salamander or Abraham.
We need intermediaries.A feeling of fullness comes,
but usually it takes some bread
to bring it.Beauty surrounds us,
but usually we need to be walking
in a garden to know it.The body itself is a screen
to shield and partially reveal
the light that’s blazing
inside your presence.Water, stories, the body,
all the things we do, are mediums
that hide and show what’s hidden.Study them,
and enjoy being washed
with a secret we sometimes know,
and then not.Posted by Kitt -
After Bill and before Chuck, Carolyn and I spent a New Year’s Eve together. Neither of us really wanted to get out in Drunk Driving Amateur Night but we did want to take the day-off opportunity to be self indulgent.
We went shopping for treats, on the day, came back to my house and began the year as we hoped it would continue. We had happy mouths and had enjoyed company we enjoyed thoroughly. I don’t recall if we bothered to watch the ball drop.
We decided that was a damn fine way to start the year so we declared it our tradition.
When Chuck joined our family, we included him. (I really am fortunate that those 2 genuinely like each other.)
Tomorrow, I have to work. They will go shopping without me and I will come home to treats.
We are planning to watch Big Night, I will make pasta with tomato sauce and we will eat cheese, chocolate, scallops, red grapes and I have no clue what else. There is a bottle of cava in the fridge next to another bottle of chardonnay. There is red wine in the rack, including a bottle of Lambrusco I’ve been itching to open for months.
I will not be able to get through with work soon enough.
I am the Audience 