Post-Graduation and Pre-Seminary

A Hard Decree Last Night God Posted on the Tavern wall A hard decree for all of love's inmates Which read: If your heart cannot find a joyful work The jaws of this world Will probably Grab hold of your Sweet Ass. ~Hafiz~

The above poem by Hafiz was relayed to me by Ken Butigan, my Pace e Bene mentor for the year long training program. I wish I could say I feel something in this moment as I read over it, feel what I felt the morning he read it over the phone. I don’t know what is wrong with me lately, I feel so tired, so creativeless. Yesterday, I did have a sudden visual--though violent--of what sexism would look like, if it were a performance art piece. Thinking upon the structural violence so laden in our society and culture, I wrote “When men are sexist and in turn commit cruel acts towards women, through deeds of lesser acknowledged violence, what becomes of women? Conversely, when women act cruelly towards men, much in the way men are sexist towards women, what becomes of men?" These images of the wounded males and females bleed out in our everyday lives. One piece, one limb at a time being severed from the body of the victim. Cuts and bruises fill out the bloated bodies of these people and no one looks. Instead, they turn away from an gruesome scene of mutiny. The rendering of these dazed corpses, obliterated at the orifice of culture and society is an awakening for us all. “What do you mean, how I view women?” asks the sediment-laden rogue.” Oh wow, I am filled with doubt and suspicion, regret and disbelief. “How could this be?” I muse.

Do we get up day after day to garden the soulless antiquated generation of yesteryear? Do we muster our lives up again, rousing the wild child within, to knock it down with structures of seemingly innocuous violence? Where is the crone to watch over the children? Where is the sage to guide the thirsty spirits of the young? Life is to be loved and laughed. We are to play with the ever changing prisms of this light, the light that lighteth up every woman and man. For it is within this light that we drink of man and grace; peace and death; love and swarthy chaos. This is how we make it into the next world. We make the disorder and clean up the provocative mess, filling up the trashcans with heaving lessons and growing ivy. Twining around our bodies to let us know how far we have truly come. These thoughts, if only lifted up to God, could prove useful. Why? They encompass the dialectical nature of the universe itself, of all there is. These thoughts could bring joy and contentment to the hardest of minds, the scrutiny of those who have fought and lost. The curling smiles would rest and trickle on the lips of those once wounded and now rapturously captive to belligerent love. Of course, we would be beholden to the Truth of this Way; this Way of containing the pieces of life which once cut, and now renew. The love of God blinding us in grandeur. The brilliance too much to relay here, it is only important to mention, and the mind can run from there. When peace is still, this Way, this Hard Decree from Hafiz will be ratified. And the torn pieces of those who have suffered from a sexism only unknown to the beatific, will be caught in the shade of an evening star off the coast of our spirit.