Spectacles and Retrospectives

I used to be afraid of rainbows I could not embrace the scarlet letter placed upon me by the church I used to be afraid of rainbows Near drowning experiences did not appeal to me I used to be afraid of rainbows Until I found community as a life raft that kept me afloat in the ocean of my own tears I used to be afraid of rainbows Because I could not claim the freedom of authentic love I used to be afraid of rainbows Until I lived into the prism created by the water of my baptism I used to be afraid of rainbows Until the church taught me that rainbows are born of the love and covenant of God. I used to be afraid of rainbows Until the liberating love of Jesus set up home in my soul I used to be afraid of rainbows Now I hide myself with and among them. I used to be afraid of rainbows Until the fore running storm and the subsequent light gave my life color. I used to be afraid of rainbows. Now I fear for a colorless void.

"Will you go?" "Yes." After spending a day helping to lead three Christmas services, the students in my young adult program were asked if they would take an extra hour, make a fourth stop and visit a family from out of state who is receiving cancer treatment in Tulsa and is unable to go home for Christmas.  "Will you go?" I asked.  "Yes", they responded.  We arrived and asked, "May we sing for you?"  "Yes", they said.  A clergy person read scripture from the Book of John - the story and promise of light overcoming darkness Then we sang.  Each note invited the presence of light, love and peace into the corner room of the ICU.  "May we pray with you?"  "Yes", the family said.  Gathered in the room of strangers, friends that had known each other for a lifetime grasped hands with  new friends who we had come to know through the sharing of song.  The mood was brighter upon our leaving. Hearts were just a tad bit...

It has long been joked and understood that I am the glorious, difficult to describe, anomaly that happens when hippies have children and raise them on hearty diet of Jesus Christ, Joan Baez and Dr. Seuss. I was sung to sleep with James Taylor tunes and taught to recite the Apostles Creed. My musical intake consisted of John Rutter on Sunday mornings and Jimi Hendrix on the drive home. Grandpa schooled us in Pete Seeger's expansive catalogue. Mom steeped us in words and melody of John Denver tunes.  She was a dedicated and devoted fan. Denver's words, perspective and bond to nature served as her poetic  anchors. She valued his insight and articulation of the human spirit tremendously and looked to his eloquence for my name. The second stanza to "Zachary and Jennifer" poetically dreams of the naming of children :  And we want to call her Jennifer And she'll dance in fields of flowers And she'll sing in summer showers Lending music to the time Oh we want to l...

Before the clock rolled over to December 26th, she was reliant on a ventilator. Less than two weeks later, she was gone.  It took me years to not feel overrun by the hostility of being cheated by hope. It still burns. I still clamor and stumble in darkness to see past the  injustice of someone who had fought so hard to live through chronic health conditions being taken down by the unstoppable swift end to pancreatic cancer.  Christmas in my heart has been branded with the insignia of death. The season is painful. The sights, the sounds and the merriment  all remind me of a time when I was watching the life leave someone. The time when I was a helpless bystander in a confusing and bewildering drama.  The Christmas season that year was the end of so many things.  It was the end of my mother's life. It was the end to her pain and struggling. It was the end to Christmas past and my childhood traditions. It was the end of a chaotic normal. The f...

January 8 th . One year ago. It has been one year since my mom finally let go and left the earth. This past year has been one of the hardest of my life. Her death was the catalyst for unimaginable change. Two weeks before she passed away, the words Pancreatic Cancer were first uttered. There are few other words that will suck the breath and hope out of a room. It seemed so cruel, unfair, and unbelievable. She had emerged from years lived with chronic illnesses, genetic mysteries, freak medical accidents victorious. Yet, this was a diagnosis no one could defeat. Her body knew it. She knew it. And she started shutting down. This side of the journey was traumatic. ·       - For a family that had always had hope (and sometimes only hope) our hope was stolen. ·       - The flippancy of some of the doctors and medical staff still stings. ·       - The assumptions of the staff because of my mother’s appearance still ...

My mother was always gracious enough to let my camera accompany us on her numerous medical journeys. in the ten plus years we walked those roads, I had multiple conversations with outsiders who looked upon this as disrespectful or inappropriate. Mom and I both knew that she had a story to share. I always felt that when the time was right, the images would begin to speak for themselves. And for her. Her story, her history, her journey was one that was so intricate and complex words often failed to convey the experience authentically while simultaneously retaining her humanity.  What follows is a short documentary project from May 2013. This is the first time these images have been outside the hands of trusted friends and confidants. In sharing these, we begin another journey. All images copyrighted. 

This was written about two weeks before Christmas this year. Just now getting around to posting ...  I’ve gotten used to bad news at Christmas time. It never fails that what society inflicts upon us as “The Most Wonderful Time of the Year” always enters my life with both triumph and heartache. There are the usually family issues that everyone encounters: there are traffic-jammed highways, there are atrocious squeaky Christmas tunes “sung” by various woodland creatures. Illness always invites itself to the party. Some years we have ushered in the birth of Hope gathered around small dimly lit trees in ICU rooms – a place where there is noise and hurry. And pain and stillness. A place where the concept of Emmanuel becomes concrete. Other times, we have spent Christmas Day in the ER. Other times hospital season arrives just in time to watch fireworks from the hospital-parking garage. This year, we are stomping on fires and holding our breath. It hur...

Yesterday, I had an angry day. A day filled with so much emotion and pain that I spent the day in a broken, onion-skin-fragile state. Today, I was in recovery –survival mode. I let myself sleep in. I ate cinnamon rolls for breakfast at lunchtime. I watched a Red Box movie and got lost in the sensory experience of folding towels fresh from the dryer. I didn’t get dressed until dinnertime and I didn’t leave my house until 7:00pm. Yesterday was such a strange experience. It was like having a fight with a lover while on vacation. Enraged simultaneously with passion and frustration, with love and contempt, with devotion and confusion. Fight all you want, you’re still going to be forced to sleep in the same bed and continue your journey when you awake. You can even make-up and move on. It’s still a relationship changer. As yesterday ended, I showered, brushed my teeth, took my medicine and crawled into bed with myself… and my misfiring immune system.   I have no enlight...

I process the world in which I live in words and images. I have forever been fascinated with the confining and liberating aspect of language. A way in which I over come this is by photographing my world. I photograph what I see, what I live and where I go. Because My life is what it is

I am an avid reader of Consumer Reports. For three main reasons: 1.) I enjoy reading how human beings quantify and classify human-made products. Typically the products reviewed within the pages of this publication are items of luxury, the focus of the (perceived) American Dream. Televisions, stereos, Mp3 players, vacuums cleaners, refrigerators - these are the things that are dissected in Consumer Reports. These are the things that belong. 2.) I feel that as a person with monetary power (a power that only a minority of the world possesses) I have a responsibility to myself and to the larger global society to be informed when I make a purchase, especially a large one. 3.) My Aunt Jody read Consumer Reports religiously. As well as Reader's Digest (I read that, too. I have since I was about 9 years old). She was one of the most fascinating characters I have ever encountered. Reading what she read makes sense. Having qulified that this is a publication that I enjoy and...

• I am among the generation of kids that got the standardized talks in elementary school to educate us to ‘stranger danger’ in order to make us aware of the potential of kidnapping. I remember faces on milk cartons. • When I was in kindergarten, we became involved in the Gulf War. I was very young, but raised in a house where current events were openly discussed. I knew war was bad and that people violently died. And I knew that not all the people that died in war were the bad guys.   • When I was in the fourth grade (and living in Oklahoma) the Murrah Federal Building was bombed and 168 lives were taken. • When I was in the sixth grade, there was a bombing at the Atlanta Olympics. What should have been a celebration of national pride became fear-driven-chaos and embarrassment.  •  In the eighth grade, there was a premeditated mass shooting at Columbine High School. People my age were killing each other. • On picture day my junior year of high school, I stood in l...

My mom was our primary caretaker and lived (and continues to live) with severe gastrointestinal illness. The human experience centers around food. The focus on food becomes more intense during the winter holidays.  My experience with food has been different for as long as I can remember. My mother is forever on special diets that vary in substance, nutritional content, naturally ingested and/or artificially administered. In my world it it "normal". Even as a child, I was preceptive to the fact that this was not "normal" to others. Others (those who do not have experience with gastrointestinal  disease or illness) are uncomfortable with things out of their realm of experience. They often react by staring or doing a number of things that make the experience of food a strained emotional event, something that the breaking of bread (whatever that is to you) should never be. This is not to say that questions can not be asked. They can. And they should. As with all convers...

I have a change machine.  The 1960's pink change machine sat in my grandparents garage for as long as I can remember. It was placed there after my grandfather sold his string of locally own coin-operated laundromats. I've always had an attraction to the change machine. As a child, I would ask what it was and why it was in the garage. It is a piece of machinery from a different time and place than myself. In my collection of personal memories, it has always taken at least a dollar to run a coin operated washing machine (that is when there were still coin operated machines. Most of the machines in my memory operated off of a debit card type system). I don't remember half-dollars ever being a comfortable form of common currency. And pink was never a cool color for anything (other than a baby girl's bedroom).  The change machine came into my possession a little over a year and a half ago. My grandmother was moving out of her house (which she had lived in for near...

Illness is the other; The uninvited guest To welcome in this stranger, Radiates protest I remain the host, At a party I didn’t plan; I remain the host, Until the fatal end But at the party there is laughter Sweet love and precious life There is trueness There is wholeness And the uninvited guest