Day After Easter

yesterday was just a yesterday & didn't feel like an Easter. Rainy, Dismal, 45 degrees. En Total: Blah.
and Mondays the same. On the other side: I went to visit my parents and did spent the night up at the house
in Chattanooga. In order to have an Easter there has to be a Passover. N. my brother and I watched a video of
the movie "Amadeus" and i went to bed and cried. Reconcilliation is about taking small steps and I can see his pain on his face. Wednesday I may be returning the house to help my brother bring Dad up to the Dementia Unit. Since it is an Assitive Living Unit , Nursing staff won't be doing it. It weird isn't it. A son so brutally battered by his father, now a grown man bringing that same father now frail and emotionally regressed into an Alzeihmers Unit. There doesn't seem to be a whole of of talk of batterers and their sons. Sons and fathers.
On One occassion when N. was a teen he was sexually abusing me and immediately afterwards took me into the bathroom and shoved my head into the toilet. flushing it. Immediately grabbing me by the hair to face our reflections it it saying, " We are Daddy's Monsters."
no. not our fathers monsters.
just children. trying to cope . survive our own war.
and myselft struggling to survive my brothers war against himself, perpetrated on me.

and no.
Reconciliation.
For me does not equal forgiveness.
To me : Mercy

I regret not having attended our Unitarian Passover Service. Tasting the Bitter Salt. Remember.
who and what your were and how you survived. Easter: Transformation. I can speak this language.
Who will speak it with me?

inside-out prison exchange program

I am presently attending a prison exchange program entitled , Inside-Out. It is an extensive class taking place inside the local minimum security prison.

it is commanding a lot of time, reading and writing and also commitment.
& i must say that it is a transformative experience.
I think that I had always wondered and felt that the present corrections system was not alleviating the problems that our communities were having but only placing a thin band aid on it if that -
It is so imminintly real when you have seen into the scared faces of men getting ready to be returned into our communites wondering how they are going to make it when local communities are not organized with enouf supportive programs to assist them with re-entry and the Criminial justice system is set up to re-incarserate them with the slightest ticket.

How can they re-enter society with after haveing spent years behind bars and still no education to fly out into the world with? Most do not even have a GED and the right set of job skills to start on the right foot.

My Mothers Birthday:March 10

Daffodil Day !!
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Prior to last Thursday I had recieved an e-mail from my brother regarding my mother's birthday. I'd suggested that he pick some daffodils from the garden and let be part of the day's present. In the mean time he informed me that my sister J. had arrived from Oregon.
and suggested that I come. -----------------------------

So I went.
I arrived just in time for the Birthday dinner as I tried to make it as much as a surprise as I could. My brother and sister had bought her 2 birthday cakes. Daddy did the " Black Panther " Salute after I had told my mother of attending an Angela Davis Speech at the University." He was more medicated than I had expected but was great for all the three of us adult children to sing her "Happy Birthday".

My brother N. --------------------------------------------
It is good that we spent a little more time together. I'm not sure what reconcilliation means.
but i say this, That some how i heal further than I thought possible every time we meet and that I see his pain and how it has effected his life.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sigh.................................................................

Attended Food Not Bombs Legislative Plaza this Sunday.

A warm day and as the homeless men have no access to weather reports I told of them of the last weather report that I had watched. More hispanic men today & as always a few women.
A Hispanic Man who was so hungry that he was crouched kneeling at the food line like an altar of sorts only he was under the influence of something and not physically well either. Stuffing food into his mouth as his stomach was safe place to save the food for another ocassion as I helped others stuff donuts into their knacksacks as the other man vomited white corn.
I didn't witness what had taken place but the fella who has the bycicle watched and told me that
the hispanic man had gotten scared and had the kitchen knife out. Everyone around him had coached him until 1 of the young guys had taken it away from him.

I begin to fathom what it is to be in the shoes of a man who sees nothing but black despair: he put his head on the slab of cement and fell asleep. I asked the older fella. A man who had been a
airplane mechanic but had lossed his job& went to prison for an offense i did not ask about.
i asked him to help me get one of the plastic bags of dirt, so that we could put it underneatth the head of the sleeping man.
He went and got it and together we carried up to the sleeping man, He suggested that we turn it over to the other side as it was not as dirty and before i slipped it under his head I'd said," Senor
para su cabeza. " --- My Spanish is not very good.
He opened his blood shot eyes as he saw a blur as I murmured , " shsh shsh shssshh shss
very softly & he put his head on it and fell fast asleep again.

I feel as i have been very lucky in my life: There have been people who in thier action have said that " Life is good. Come back to the world" and planted a seed of hope and courage inside of me.
This is my way passing the Gift forward - but isn't there not also a compassionate God, a Merciful God? Whom to him/her we are creatures of its's divine creation/ blessings to him, as are in his image. So how can we not treat each other with compassion and loving kindness ?

okay... & about the FUN question...............................


over and out.
d with assistance from : (sophocles and sophia.)
* and Heroditus ( the church Gerbil)