Battle Hymn for an Army of Lovers (Crys Matthews)

Happy New Year!  

Forgive me, friends... for my lost concentration; it has been three months since my last blog post (channeling my inner rebellious Catholic schoolgirl).  No excuses, but valid reasons.  

At the one-year mark of Eric's passing, the tree dedication… part of me thought it would be tied up neatly with a bow, as we had cycled through all the Firsts (Thanksgiving, Christmas, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Eric’s birthday, etc.).  Silly Me.  The holidays rolled around… again… and I realized the Seconds were just as hard.  I learned that, if decorating evokes pain, a holiday wreath and doormat will do (they did).  Maybe even a holiday mug.  Or not.  If traditions are triggering, I can make new ones.  Or not.  There is a fine line between remembering and suffering… and there is no timeline on healing.  Trying to (continue to) be gentle with myself.

I still have days when the thought of him makes my heart literally ache… when I can’t manage to get a deep breath… when I refuse to leave the comfort of my home.  I worry that I am developing a severe case of Agoraphobia, yet a few things motivate me:  Garden Day, dinner with a dear friend, a library run (ha!)... and others have me seriously weighing the options of many events which, in the past, would have me jumping at the opportunity.  sigh...

One tradition I hope to always follow through on (my first being January 2008):

Inspired by Beth Weaver-Kreider's poem below, as well as the powerful song by Crys Matthews, my Word(s) of the Year are (Love) Revolution, on a political level as well as in my personal interactions... 💥✌💜

We have less than a week until Inauguration Day (Monday January 20, 2025), and I am taking advantage of the calm before the storm, not naive enough to think there aren't many proposed changes on the horizon, most of them for the worst.  It is horrifying the nation chose Trump as our next/new leader (and when are we going to fix that broken Electoral College process?!?).

I am not one to finger-point nor name-call nor disparage, I very much subscribe to Lincoln's 1860 philosophy of “have faith that right makes might.", and I am fully prepared to do whatever it takes to fight back from a place of peaceful protest/non-violent demonstrations.  My days of standing on street corners and marching through the public streets are not over.  I even gave my daughter Sarah her own pussy hat for Christmas.  Love Revolution.  Both/And.  Just. Do. It... 💘

From Crys:

This was created from six very specific muses -- my mom, Michelle Obama, Nelson Mandela, Rita Mae Brown, Julia Ward Howe, and Eva Cassidy (via Curtis Mayfield.)

After the outcome of the 2016 election, I was floored. I am an out, black, lesbian woman living in the south (although, thankfully not in the 'deep' south). I was terrified, which made me angry. My mom reminded me that she has seen many presidents come and go in her lifetime and is still standing. Love and faith guide her and that, she reminded me, should guide me. 

"An army of lovers shall not fail" is a Rita Mae Brown quote that has come to mean a great deal to me. It's really just an amazingly beautiful sentiment that doesn't really need much context beyond that. 

"When they go low, we go high" as famously spoken by Michelle Obama has become my mantra going in to 2017 and will be something I will try every day to embody during the next four years. 

Nelson Mandela very eloquently said, “No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.” 

The song People Get Ready was written by Curtis Mayfield. Released in 1965, the song's meaning was amplified by the climate in America during the civil rights movement. Eva Cassidy's cover of it has always resonated with me. 

And last, but not least, which leads me to the title of the song... Julia Ward Howe is the woman who wrote the Battle Hymn of the Republic (aka Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory). Later she was a suffragette. She wrote, "let us live to make men free". 

I thought, if these few principles could guide our government and our citizens we might all make it to 2020 in one piece (and maybe even in peace). And so, I give you my Battle Hymn for an Army of Lovers... 

v1. Change is coming once again,

except this time it feels like the world's about to end.

White-robed devil's in plain sight,

angry protests in the streets night after night,

and it weighs heavy on my mind.

Why are we so quick to run backwards after all this time?

But I won't let it change my heart.

I was born full of love and hope and, when I die, that's how I'll depart.

Ch. And when you find yourself 

incapable of seeing eye to eye

Remember: when they go low, 

we go high.

v2. Change is coming — that's for sure.

We gave a madman all the keys and let him walk right in the door. 

And I don't think he'll see the light,

until the whole world is on fire, but that's alright.

We will still be here when he's gone,

and if it doesn't kill us all, well it sure will make us strong.

Don't let four years change your heart!

We are not born hating each other -- now is not the time to start.

Ch. And when you find yourself 

incapable of seeing eye to eye

Remember: when they go low, 

we go high.

Bridge: There's a song penned for soldiers --

it says, "let us live to make men free."

We're all sisters.

We're all brothers.

Standing on each others' shoulders

there's no wall we cannot scale.

We are an army of lovers,

and we shall not fail.

Ch. So when you find yourself 

incapable of seeing eye to eye

Remember: when they go low, 

we go high.

SONG:  Battle Hymn for an Army of Lovers by Crys Matthews

BOOK:  See No Stranger: A Memoir and Manifesto of Revolutionary Love by Valarie Kaur

POEM(S):  Walking Through the Gateway of Another Year by Beth Weaver-Kreider

Let’s call them New Year’s Revolutions

or Re-Solutions

or Revelations

or Re-evaluations.

Change. Progress.

Uncovering. Assessing.

In the coming year, I resolve to re-solve

my problems and issues every day,

not just on this morning.

For every morning is the morning

of a whole new year,

a bright blank page

in which any thing

can be a new thing.

Let every moment be a moment like now,

when the newborn sun shines

over the ridge

onto the scarlet breast

of a cardinal,

and the eye

for a moment sees nothing

but sparkling red.

The Alternative New Year List by Dr. Lynne Sedgmore

Here Now

As you begin another year 

Pause

Remember 

Who it is your heart beats wildly for, and why

How lightness and joy fill every fibre of your being

How to laugh with no restraint 

How to serve those less fortunate

How to care for Mother Earth 

Here Now

As you begin another year 

Act

Tell everyone you love how beautiful they are 

Dance with bare feet and feel the wind upon your face

Find a friend and giggle together until it hurts

Give a random act of kindness to someone in struggle or loss

Find another way to combat climate change

Here Now

As you begin another year 

Self-care

See your own beauty and celebrate yourself 

Speak your gratitude for all the blessings you receive

Laugh out loud into a genuine belly laugh

Treat your body to a massage, tend to your own needs

Walk barefoot on the land feeling nature’s nourishment 

Here Now

As you begin another year 

Be 

Stop and stare, be still and listen every day

Enact an enlivening body prayer with gratitude and grace

Begin laugh yoga

Pray and light a candle for anyone in need

Live more in tune with nature’s beauty and Her beating heart

QUOTE(S):  "Most optimists are not born that way. They are created. When the world asked them to harden, they softened. When they experienced pain, they vowed not to give that pain to others. When they understood the lineage of trauma, they healed instead of continuing the pattern. Optimists are not people who have never had a hard day or a hard season or a collection of hard years. Optimists are those that have walked through the fire and decided that love, hope, resiliency, and compassion are lighter to carry. For most people, their optimism is hard-won. Fought for. An act of brave resistance in a harsh, demanding, chaotic world." ~ Jamie Varon

“Do your little bit of good where you are; it's those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.” ~ Desmond Tutu

"Love is the most powerful force in the world. If people tell you that the opposite of love is fear, it is not so. Love just is. Love has no opposite. Remember that, dear one. Love has no opposite. Love just is. It is the answer to everything. Everything." ~ Dolores Cannon

"Truth and love have been smacked down, so many more times in history before today. Truth, because it’s often inconvenient, and love because it is vulnerable.

But truth is like gravity, and carbon, and the sun behind an eclipse: it’s still there. And love stays alive if you tend it like a flame. If you feel crushed by unkindness today, it’s a time for grieving, reaching out to loved ones, noticing one bright color somewhere in the day. Remembering what there is to love. Starting with the immediate, the place and people we can tend ourselves, and make safe. We can’t save everything all at once, but it’s still worth saving something. Because there are so many of us to do it.

And we are all still here today, exactly as we were yesterday. Like gravity, and carbon, and the sun behind an eclipse." ~ Barbara Kingsolver

My Silver Lining (First Aid Kit)

Since 2008, it has been my custom each January 1 (a so-far-17-year tradition) to ascribe to Christine Kane's concept of choosing a Word of the Year to inspire/motivate/give me direction as to the tone/theme of my upcoming 52 weeks/365 days.  In retrospect, some of my previous words/phrases have been Release, Create, Let It Go, Health, Light, Follow-Through, Contentment, Forward, Stretch, and last year's Sage.

After much pondering (I had it narrowed down to three:  runners-up were Gratitude and Heart/Love), I decided on Now/Be Present for 2024.

If there is anything I have learned since Eric's fatal car accident on September 26, 2023... it is that *Everything* can turn upside-down in the blink of an eye.  Monumentally.  Irrevocably.  Unimaginably.  We think it's a cliche until it happens to us.  In fact, I'd venture to say we go through life thinking that it *won't* happen to us.  Strangers, yes.  Friends of friends, yes.  Sometimes even friends.  But we're still somehow One Degree of Separation from an actual tragedy.  Until it does.  No wouldas/couldas/shouldas.  No what-ifs.  No if-onlys.  Bam.  A family, a couple, a neighborhood, the world... is diminished by one.

For the past 90+ days, I have spiraled through anxious, needy, emotional, worrying, extrapolating, melancholy, self-destructive, desperate, scrambling, hyper-ventilating.  I was a big, fat, f*cking mess... and I had a good reason for being so.  My son is gone and, as many times as I write/say/scream it, that basic fact will not change.  I continue to replay in my head the phone call from his girlfriend (across state lines) that changed my life.  It was visceral.  My stomach flip-flopped.  The tears welled.  I haven't been suicidal, but I needed to figure out how to get out of the loop.

I now wake up every morning, and do my best to talk myself off the proverbial ledge.  I realize I hadn't been taking care of myself as well as I should; everyone else, yes... but not me.  Vowing (and following through) with taking my vitamins/supplements, eating more healthfully, moving my body, muting my phone and setting aside quiet time, maintaining boundaries.  The grief journey (there is no destination) continues, as does the healing.

What's done is done; I can't alter the past, nor can I control the future.  But Right Now, The Present, is within my grasp.  I will do everything in my power to honor E and make him proud of me... one thought, task, day at a time... ⏰

SONG:  My Silver Lining by First Aid Kit (and there is a f*cking owl in the video... 😲)

BOOK:  Be Where Your Feet Are: Seven Principles to Keep You Present, Grounded, and Thriving by Scott O'Neil

POEM(S):  

She walked naked

Into the New Year.

No definite plan.

No vision boards.

No intentions set.

No journals created.

No classes or workshops scheduled.

Only trust in the Great Mystery,

in Goddess,

to provide and direct

her Soul toward its destiny.

Dreaming the visions between

past and future lives,

She listened to the voice

of her Soul

as it called her forward

into love and grace and magnificence.

As it called her deeper into her purpose,

step by step by step.

With only an open heart

and the thrill of the journey,

She walked freely and open

into the coming year.

~ Arlene Bailey

Her Sacred Wild, Re-Membering the Wild Soul Woman 

The Only Prayer by James Crews

Because there was nothing else to do,

and the news frightened me as usual,

I took a walk on my favorite trail

in the woods, and because the snow

began to melt as soon as it fell,

everything was wet—the lichen a bright

lime-green on the bark of each fallen tree,

the leaves beneath my feet deliciously

soft as they squelched and sank back

into the arms of the earth that shaped them. 

I picked up one of the limp, gold-

toned beech leaves, pressed it to my chest 

then left my despair on a mossy trunk,

like placing a lit candle on an altar

and saying the only prayer that matters:

I'm here, I’m here, I’m here.

With Astonishing Tenderness by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

When, in the middle of the night,

you wake with the certainty you’ve

done it all wrong, when you wake

and see clearly all the places you’ve failed,

in that moment, when dreams will not return,

this is the chance for your softest voice—

the one you reserve for those you love most—

to say to you quietly, oh sweetheart,

this is not yet the end of the story.

Sleep will not come, but somehow,

in that wide awake moment there is peace—

the kind of peace that does not need

everything to be right before it arrives.

The peace that comes from not fighting

what is real. The peace that rises

in the dark on its sure dark wings

to meet you exactly as you are.

QUOTE(S):  “There is only one day left, always starting over: it is given to us at dawn and taken away from us at dusk.” ~ Jean-Paul Sartre 

"This grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never all dried at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor is ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal sunset, eternal dawn and gloaming, on sea and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls." ~ John Muir

"We are so brief. A one-day dandelion. A seedpod skittering across the ice. We are a feather falling from the wing of a bird. I don’t know why it is given to us to be so mortal and to feel so much. It is a cruel trick, and glorious." ~ Louise Erdrich