This morning I dream:
Women are gathering.
Conservative, religious, well-organized.
The men’s gathering is completed.
Gymnasium – no basket for my team to shoot at.
I shoot the ball up into the empty space,
proclaim each of our shots is worth two points,
do not feel I am part of this conservative gathering.
I witness that it is happening
and is important.

This morning:
I consider a previous dream invitation
from the business men relaxing above the Great Lake.
I feel the easy draw,
sense they are demonstrating possibility, balance, power,
while that American tourist woman nearby is so abrasive and ranting
there is no opening whatsoever for change.

A more recent dream:
The man on the other side of the valley – so easy
– so in the flow of acting and relaxing,
of working, succeeding, being present.

Awake I remember the abrasive American woman,
toxic in her experience of life as frightening and restricted,
identity tied to complaint and vigilance and finger-pointing and suffering
and attention-keeping and unconsciousness.
But in the waking life situation a part of North America
politically
publicly
proclaims the way of hatred and intolerance:
My challenge is to put down the complaint and panic identity
for long enough to consider:
I could be served by the fruits of my labours.
To join the men may not be a betrayal.
To embody the balance of work and accomplishment – relaxed enjoyment of accomplishments – is a way forward.

The rest is panic and exclusion –
and a carpet of fear on which intolerance rests and enjoys attention.

 
Cohen.
Leonard,
I was singing Hallelujah this morning for no clear reason – the best reason.
Suddenly overcome by grief for my mother… surprise.
No warning – not quite awake, at the kitchen sink
I had been thinking of her and what could have been:
If I could have had a life that I could have invited her to witness, if not share:
That calm home of child and nurture and balance and security – that I was fine –
that if I had been fine,
then I could have invited her to sit and read to my children –
that she could have sat in the peace and sunlight of words being magic and good.
And that I did not have that,
and that I did not make that,
and that there was no bridge for that,
and that even my longing for that:
my daily fantasy of having some form of reunion with my mother –
of something normal and loving and tolerant and easy
and of the truth of who we were, who we really were …
that the longing was not enough.
Action was necessary, and I was stuck,
and I was too certain that she would drop my child if I handed him to her.
And unfortunately this is the truer picture of that time.
But ‘what about now’ is the question.

In the waking day overhead
the search and rescue plane trains searchers and rescuers
who are released like seeds
while the military profile of the flying thing
is shielded from the vision of the refugees
whose hearts pound unbidden at the sound and sight.
As to a dark sun the raised hand is a blinder.
Walking to pick up the child who might remember the sound
is an exercise in taming the voices of panic and reason
into a litany of comfort and goodness.

So hallelujah for the pain of trying
and hallelujah for the mistakes.
And hallelujah for the godforsaken stories
that are held to the bosom to feed on the heart
of possibility.
And hallelujah for the impossible goodness
leaping like a seed into the soil
and not telling anyone
until it has burst forth in undeniable glory,
even if for a moment
before being plucked by the person
who does not understand its language yet.

I am the seed, and the blossom, and the bosom,
and the hand, and the ignorant, and the longing,
and the future and the past,
and the watcher, and the blinder,
and the hope.