reality is the way to healing
Seventy-seven betrayers will stand by the road,
And those who love you will be few but stronger.
Seventy-seven betrayers, skilful and various,
But do not fear them: they are unimportant.
You must learn soon, soon, that despite Judas
The great betrayals are impersonal
(Though many would be Judas, having the will
And the capacity, but few the courage).
You must learn soon, soon, that even love
Can be no shield against the abstract demons:
Time, cold and fire, and the law of pain,
The law of things falling, and the law of forgetting.
The messengers, of faces and names known
Or of forms familiar, are innocent.
❤️
To My Daughter by Hyam Plutzik
through the window of a cheap camper
complete with age old paneling and dirty screens
I see new angles of life for the first time
this young innocent
holding her breath
hoping to be found beautiful
hoping she was good
my warm flesh pressed against
rough sheets and cold plastic
I learned that what is named love is not always tender
that sometimes winter mornings in Florida are colder than we expected
that if you keep breathing you can make it through deep water
sometimes you only see the poop happening after the pictures get developed months later
sometimes it takes years to understand and even more years to speak about the truth of what you lived through
sometimes it’s just a short flashback that opens up a doorway into those moments…
that girl in a pink and black striped shirt
trying to smile just a little
as she struggles inside to come to terms with the abuse
trying to figure out the pain
already living in two places
sitting on the plastic covered floral print sofa
while the little girl hides under a table
hoping to stay safe
in this brutal place
in this wicked world
she’s coming to know too well
30 years later my fingerprints are still there on that grimy splintering wood
the soft pieces of my heart I left on that top bunk
still call out for me to understand
how this world can break you
and how you can surely find the way to heal again
❤️
Amy Lloyd
It must be troubling for the god who loves you
To ponder how much happier you’d be today
Had you been able to glimpse your many futures.
It must be painful for him to watch you on Friday evenings
Driving home from the office, content with your week—
Three fine houses sold to deserving families—
Knowing as he does exactly what would have happened
Had you gone to your second choice for college,
Knowing the roommate you’d have been allotted
Whose ardent opinions on painting and music
Would have kindled in you a lifelong passion.
A life thirty points above the life you’re living
On any scale of satisfaction. And every point
A thorn in the side of the god who loves you.
You don’t want that, a large-souled man like you
Who tries to withhold from your wife the day’s disappointments
So she can save her empathy for the children.
And would you want this god to compare your wife
With the woman you were destined to meet on the other campus?
It hurts you to think of him ranking the conversation
You’d have enjoyed over there higher in insight
Than the conversation you’re used to.
And think how this loving god would feel
Knowing that the man next in line for your wife
Would have pleased her more than you ever will
Even on your best days, when you really try.
Can you sleep at night believing a god like that
Is pacing his cloudy bedroom, harassed by alternatives
You’re spared by ignorance? The difference between what is
And what could have been will remain alive for him
Even after you cease existing, after you catch a chill
Running out in the snow for the morning paper,
Losing eleven years that the god who loves you
Will feel compelled to imagine scene by scene
Unless you come to the rescue by imagining him
No wiser than you are, no god at all, only a friend
No closer than the actual friend you made at college,
The one you haven’t written in months. Sit down tonight
And write him about the life you can talk about
With a claim to authority, the life you’ve witnessed,
Which for all you know is the life you’ve chosen.
💞
The God Who Loves You by Carl Dennis
ON ABUSE AND “SPIRITUALITY”
“You attracted it because you desired it”.
“If you think there’s a problem with another’s words or actions,
YOU are the one who’s confused”.
“Everything is just your projection. Everything is in your mind”.
“Clear up your vibration and you’ll stop attracting bad things to yourself”.
“You are too attached to the body. Go beyond the body. It’s not who you are.”
“If you have doubts, fears, resistance, pain, anger, then you must be in your ego and totally unenlightened”.
“The past is an illusion. Let it go right now!”.
Ugh. I’m so tired of all this New Age spiritual bullshit.
I’m tired of ANY spirituality that doesn’t fully honour
our messy, unresolvable, first-hand, real-time, embodied human experience.
That doesn’t bow deeply to the struggle of our raw and tender hearts.
That guilt-trips us for our imperfections and shames our limitations.
No, it’s not always your projection.
Yes, sometimes other people really ARE abusive and need to be stopped.
No, everything isn’t always “in your mind”.
Yes, your body matters. Your feelings too.
No, your doubts and fears are not ‘wrong’ or ‘bad’ or ‘unevolved’.
No, you do not ‘attract’ abuse through a faulty ‘vibrational frequency’.
No, you do not deserve to be violated in any way, in the name of Truth, in the name of God, in the name of Love, or IN ANY OTHER NAME.
Yes, your boundaries deserve to be respected, your ‘yes’ AND your ‘no’ too.
No, it’s not okay for spiritual teachers to abuse people “for their own good”
– to shock them into awakening, to enlighten them, to help them drop their “ego”.
Teachers that use abuse as a tool are simply abusers, not teachers.
I reject any spirituality that dismisses our tender, vulnerable, fragile humanity.
I reject any spirituality that shames us for our precious human thoughts and feelings.
I reject any spirituality that begins any sentence with “If you were enlightened…”
I reject any spirituality that divides self from no self, divine from human, sacred from profane, absolute from relative, heaven from earth, duality from nonduality, material from spiritual.
I once saw a popular spiritual teacher addressing a recently bereaved woman.
He said, “Your heartbreak is illusory and only the activity of the separate self.
One day the separate self will vanish, along with all suffering”.
And in that moment, I saw a deep, deep sickness and inhumanity at the heart of contemporary spirituality. The invalidation of trauma, the false promises, the power games, the suppression of the feminine.
And I vowed to bow to that fucking broken heart as if it were God Herself.
Until the end of time.
– Jeff Foster
life: acoustic & amplified 