Kaleidoscope

What is life if not an unfolding?
A kaleidoscope that molds and shifts in its turning
Seasons in an ebb and flow
The great and slow unfolding. 

*  *  *

You ask me what I want and I say healing.

Recognize pain in yourself, and step towards the healing.

In our naked souls lies the possibility of restoration or destruction.

Trust is the lynchpin that holds the possibility in tandem.

*  *  *

I crafted a song for us. For the ten girls in front of me sitting cross legged on my living room carpet.

For myself.

"You are beautiful. You are beautiful. You are radiant like the stars."

I sing to them intently as I strum the guitar, each word a prayer that they would always know their intrinsic value and the stamp of God on each of them.  A prayer of intercession that anything or anyone that would lead them to believe that their value comes outside of themselves would be eliminated.

Together we sing.

"I am beautiful. I am beautiful. I am radiant like the stars."

I see their faces shy, each maybe claiming their beauty for the first time. We grow up in a world where the beauty of a woman and girl is a value perceived to be given rather than claimed.

"We are beautiful. We are beautiful. We are radiant like the stars."

In singing we remind one another of this--of our beauty. We stand strong and firm together, walking boldly into tomorrow.

I do not know what the girls see as they look at me, but I know that in singing I sing not only to them, but to me. 

I sing to my healing process 13 years in the making, since I first began to question "Am I beautiful?"

(I was really asking, "Am I valuable?")


*  *  *

I sit across from the sisters in the convent, slowly eating my bowl of soup
These in-between spaces are fascinating to me
Psych wards, convents--it's all the same
I am but dust and to dust I will return
There is beauty in the cycles of life
Healing comes in the awakening
Prayer the recentering, the recalibrating
The space where you whisper "I AM WHO I AM."
And in response I fall back in a sweet surrender of awe.

Abba.
Sweet love. 
Thank you.