bridges burned
seasons turned
lessons learned
and i know i'm a better woman now

yes indeed, it's been a while since i've written here, and life has radically changed in these last few months...new home, new business venture, new CD, new insights, new healing, new grace.

my childhood kaleidoscope vision haunts me daily in the best of ways. it would be so much easier to be a monochrome conformist in navigating the waters of this world, but deep inside i know, that would be dishonest and dishonoring. the more i back away from old old paradigms, the more clearly i can see both their fruits and their flaws. being true to myself and getting more comfortable with the kaleidoscopic non-conformist i am is a great benefit of this new city called maturity. ironically, the more i lean into this comfort zone of self-acceptance, the younger and more invigorated i feel. i thank God for translating the debris of so much regret into diamonds of renewal. to sing the unique song of my heart is a daunting aspiration indeed, with so many forces of narrow-minded opposition constantly breathing the dragon's fiery breath of mediocrity upon my efforts at the excellence of serenity. but still i sing anyway; and even if i only have myself and God as an audience, my mission on this passion-starved planet is ultimately accomplished.

yesterday i got pulled down into the dregs of emotional swampiness, bombarded with inner conversation such as:

you will always be doomed, so forget trying to excel.
you will never excel, so just lie back and be doomed.
you are nothing, nowhere, nobody.
you are hopelessly helpless and helplessly hopeless.
you'll never be anything but "fill-in-the-blank-with-any-and-all-negative-self-defeating-adjectives"

this emerged within me in the face of ALL the blossoming blessings i am increasingly inundated with from my interior and my exterior worlds. this sentiment slithered its way through like insects, worms, and weeds in a garden. and it just scared me a little.

i would like to reiterate for my own benefit and for the enrichment of the world at large:

anything that remotely resembles any of the above "black" statements is always, absolutely, unequivocally, 100%, LIES, LIES, LIES. the only response to such lies is the swift decisive application of TRUTH, TRUTH, TRUTH, and more TRUTH! so here goes:

my future, past, and present are all beautifully blanketed in amazing grace.
this grace empowers me to flourish and fly.
my life is overflowing with the beauty of my husband, daughter, best friend, family, other dear fellow strugglers i love dearly, and all the rainbow abundance that God lavishes on me continuously.
all moments of self-sabotage are nothing but verbal mirages, False Evidence Appearing Real, FEAR!

so what am i afraid of??? what are we all afraid of??? why, the very thing we need the most, that unfailingly sets every captive soul free...the truth. SABOTAGE equals MIRAGE. that's a little "bumpersticker-ish" but a worthwhile thing to remember and be healed by.

hi blog world, a hearty welcome back to me! where have i been? oh, just living a little and dying a little every day, in big and small, good and bad ways. but i am pleased to report, mostly GOOD! yes fine folks, life is an even more exciting adventure than ever. new house, new music, new plans, new grace. i can't believe i honestly thought i had no option but to put myself out to pasture and hang around waiting to keel over. depression is such a deceiver, and deceit is so depressing!

all right, the KADOBRA update:

KA: Karen my bestest friend extraordinaire -- it's ok for me to get a little giddy when i think of this lady, because quite simply, she rocks! every day in every way, she's rocking with increasing, inspiring health. in fact, we're doing the des moines marathon this weekend--walking the little 5K path, but ya gotta start somewhere. anyway, time is a taker in some ways and a giver in others. i've been given an imponderable wealth of loyalty, grace, friendship, goofiness, fun, and companionship in this beautiful package of womanhood.

DO: Dove my dream daughter -- more giddiness to report when it comes to this exceptional human being. college has been an incredible garden for her identity to emerge, and i am being given waves of grace and fulfillment in every phone conversation, every visit to her own apartment eating her very own food sitting on her very own couch, every laugh and coffee run and especially, every reunion home when she gets to come.

BRA: Last but not least, "nothing you could say could tear me away from my guy!" Brandon Findlay has given me love beyond my dreams. We have worked, played, struggled, strangled, bungled, behaved, misbehaved, laughed, cried, sang, ran around, and sat still with each other for almost two mind-blowing years now. God has given us a truly astounding partnership, and we are riding high and proud, not into the sunset, but into a thousand sunrises.

Time is a taker and time is a giver. it's real easy to dwell on what she takes, but i'm enjoying the new reflections of what she is giving me in this era of my life, gently increasing grace and peace, clearer perceptions of love and truth, the ability to say i am okay just as i am, and life is good just as it is; and the desire to kick my inner stagnancy to the curb every day. all my heart keeps saying is: thanks be to God!

freaky friday, and saturday, and sunday, etc.

i've been in a freaky funk the past few days, and i told my husband that it was some combination of emotions, hormones, and spiritual warfare. boy did i ever get that right. let's break it down:

emotions: rollercoaster rhythm and feather strength. now that's a recipe for soul success, NOT! note to self--must settle down, must stay focused, must serve others. the Bible says it best as usual -- true religion is taking care of widows and orphans and keeping oneself undefiled from the world--thank you, o book of james. notice how that highlights two extremes--worshipping God which keeps us undefiled as we focus on him continually, AND serving others since there are a plethora of needs in our own backyard at all times which are simple and addressable by us if only we would open up our eyes, ears, and hearts. but guess what? my emotions aren't usually free to thrive joyfully in these true religion extremes, why? because they are caught up in this vast middle ground of unreligious, self-absorbed mucky-muck.

hormones: just saw "the matrix" again with my adorable husband the other night. it reminded me of what a matrix we are all caught up in regarding our bodies and lifestyles. the Bible says it best as usual -- the love of money is the root of all evil. so what does this have to do with hormones? everything! that is, everything we eat, drink, breathe, buy, read, touch; and ultimately everything we worship instead of God himself. i am sitting here typing while guzzling a jumbo cola (which could have been used to successfully unclog my drain or clean up several automotive parts) , and white flour fried fast food satan snacks. no wonder my hormones are wacko. my body/mind/soul intake is inundated with unreligious, self-absorbed mucky-muck.

spiritual warfare: there is a supernatural arsenal God is waiting to unleash within us all. i know it because in the micro-seconds that i actually tune into this reality, i feel the slivers of victory, i glimpse the snapshots of vitality and velocity and vim and vigor and verve! viva la V words! if you've been paying attention, you know what i'm going to say next...the Bible says it best as usual -- we war not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers...beyond what any of us are ever awake enough to be aware of. i have to stay out of the ditch of unreligious self-absorbed mucky-muck, and fly in the sky with God and the winners! i have to fight the good fight, not lie down in a raggedy blanket of brokenness. i have to tap into the deeper dimensions of life, because that's where the truth will be found. not my truth, not your truth, but THE TRUTH, and nothing but THE TRUTH, so help us God.

are you in a freaky funk? if you are, you are not alone, and you are not without resource and remedy. guess what, you ARE the resource and remedy...THE TRUTH surging through you as you make every big and small choice you need to make for your emotions, your hormones, and your spiritual warfare.

grace and forgiveness...

to all human beings that i know and don't know, to those close to me and not so close to me, to politicians i don't agree with, to people who love things that i hate and hate things that i love;

to killers, rapists, pedophiles, sexual deviants, criminals, everyone i perceive as bad and unlikable and unredeemable, everyone who has hurt me in any way big or small, everyone who thwarts my peace in all shapes and sizes from international to interpersonal to internal;

to myself...

isn't this old news by now? isn't this a settled issue? hasn't this been thoughtfully and tearfully addressed a few million times past?

it seems my grace windshield has somehow been polluted with...pollution. spirit-shaking, faith-quaking psychic pollution. and my wiper blades have failed to keep it away.

but wait a minute, it's rained this year so steadily with love and blessing, growth and healing; wasn't that more than enough to keep the screen clean?

apparently not. have you seen that movie "magnolia" with tom cruise as a sociopathic shyster? it says we may be through with the past, but the past isn't through with us.

maybe all of us are sociopathic shysters in a way. the more i realize this, the more i am able to extend grace and forgiveness. however, the giving and/or receiving of such grace and forgiveness doesn't magically make everything a-o-k. i am still learning this, and i rank myself at about the kindergarten level; no more a baby, capable of structure and discipline; yet far, far away from anything resembling a cap and gown.

i think God has a way of sending miracles for the sake of past mistakes. it isn't about turning back and dwelling in old dysfunctional places. it is about bringing things into the present and future, with the resource of your new miracles to pour some power, freedom, and hope into various painful situations, previously viewed as too hard to see, and more to the point, too hard to feel.

love your neighbor as you love yourself, which implies that loving yourself in healthy, healing, holy ways must precede loving others. grace is the same--it needs to go to myself first. i thought i understood this; after all, i have book after book on the subject.

welcome to kindergarten, little devoted one. keep moving forward, keep chipping away at the masterpiece of grace and forgiveness that is you, keep worshipping your way through the thunder and lightning of every painstorm that bunks up the windshield. and by all means, upgrade your psychic wiper blades!

crazy thoughts...today i am having them. when i'm supposed to be all filled with hope and peace and contentment and every other word in the pollyanna lexicon, i confess...i am having crazy thoughts. they are of the tormented, demented variety. from the ludicrous to the lascivious to the just plain lazy, it's the weak link of my psychic chain rebelling and letting me know quite frankly, she don't wanna be healed, she don't wanna be rescued, she ain't gonna be cured, zapped, or released. at least not today. she is letting me know that amid the miraculous transforming adventure of my 2005, she wants to just stay on her little throne, miss demon-diva herself.

crazy thoughts...unlawful, homicidal, self-destructive, flip-out fantasies. irrational stuff that creeps and seeps through cracks made by love erosion. how do you seal up those cracks, how do you cure love erosion, how do you deal with what's already come through the cracks and messed up the neat little psychic house of cards you were building? heavy, not for the faint-hearted.

actually i take that back. i think that the time has come for all of us tender rainbow hearts, especially the faintest, to wake up and smell the denial. crazy thoughts exist, they come and go, dancing their mambos, overturning their flowerpots, and wreaking their havoc. crazy thoughts spellbind you with their musky unfamiliar fragrance, and hypnotize you into a strange forest of black rose mystery. crazy thoughts are on the B-side of our record, underneath and unseen.

this is the part where i am supposed to start spewing out the answers and Scriptures and remedies and attitudes and platitudes, and wave the big banner of God-knows-what above all our heads, chanting crazy thoughts be gone, crazy thoughts be damned, crazy thoughts shut up, crazy thoughts not nice, blah blah blah.

how about we just leave the crap on the curb where it belongs and get real for one vividly viscerally vulnerable moment? i have crazy thoughts, you have crazy thoughts, all of us have them...it is an absolute reality. and guess what they are? teachers. somebody far wiser than me said when the student is ready, the teacher appears. i don't care if you submerge your head from dawn to dusk in some powdery sweet pile of TBN or Oprah or Deepak Chopra or some ghastly fragmented fluffy version of Jesus Himself. you will have crazy thoughts, and you won't know how to handle them. at least not at first.

and guess what? i'm not providing any explanations or solutions here. even if i could, i wouldn't. why? because it's enough to just step up and tell the truth that our crazy thoughts are there. the lessons found in them are for us all to learn, each in our own way and time. my prayer for you and me is tenderly and promptly. truth is the friend hiding behind the curtain in this cosmic hide and seek game, waiting to be found. these crazy thoughts, these wounds of mine, they are nothing but curtains. see them as they are, go to them, grab them, and pull them back to let the light of truth freely shine. be taught by them, find some adorable baubles of beauty in them, enjoy them in some bizarre spiritual way. live in the light of truth they bring, make peace with them, and see if those crazy thoughts don't eventually melt into the ground like a million mini-wicked witches.

here's my latest motto for soul prosperity: clean, tidy, and awake!

as if mottos and formulas and slogans and mantras really made a dent in anyone's consciousness. guess what, skeptical friends, they do! billions upon billions of minutes and dollars invested in advertising prove this. so the adoption of personal mantras is kind of our very own tailor-made marketing plan...to sell the idea of soul prosperity to ourselves. and i believe it's time for me to buy.

clean, tidy, and awake vs. dirty, messy, and asleep

clean vs. dirty, tidy vs. messy, awake vs. asleep
clarity, discipline, and wisdom are beautiful things indeed, gems in my psychic crown. and i have so much farther to go. the regret does threaten me at times--how could i possibly have made this or that ridiculously bad choice in life, and wasted time and energy that can never be reclaimed, and contributed such profound negativity and debris to the world's soul? even typing it out like this gives me a lump of grieving in my throat. but onward and upward, moving and grooving like water, which leads me to the next of my latest personal mantras...

clear, flowing, always changing vs. clouded, clogged, and stagnant
yikes, those last three choices aren't too appealing at all. and yet we gorge ourselves on this diabolical feast laid out for us by Chef Stealer, Chef Killer, and Chef Destroyer. it's a feast guaranteed to keep us in a state of haze and maze. water is the great reminder of this need for unencumbrance, casting off excess, existing in a perpetual ballet of renewal.

let's reprogram and embrace prosperity of soul. 3 John 2 in the Bible (right before the books of Jude and Revelation) says it best: "beloved, i wish you may prosper and be in health, even as your soul prospers." sign me up, i'm on my way!

"God is so good, God is so good, God is so good, He's so good to me." i used to sing that little song in my little kiddie Bible club; now at age 40, i must shout it from my rooftop, and go tell it on my own mountain. there are moments in life when you have to just stop, look, and listen. i mean spiritually. as i do this today, only one thing comes to mind, that cheesily sweet little song from when i was 9 years old.

sometimes it's good to chat on about the issues of the day. other times it's good to ramble profusely about the clutter in my mental database to achieve some "brain-drain." but i'm not in the mood for that today. i just want to thank God for being so good to me. yes i have unresolved issues, yes i have baggage yet to be dropped, yes i have undiscipline and disorder and irrational thought and behavior patterns in desperate need of holy flushing. but through it all, i am one blessed woman. love fills my life, grace cushions my falls, and music soothes my savage beastness. the One True God holds me and scolds me and molds me like a caring parent must, letting me know constantly how much i am loved and how much he wants me to walk, run, dance, ponder, and sleep in grace. last night i cried out in song, "heal me, Jesus." guess what? he is healing me; deeply, madly, and truly.

come on and sing it with me just for one second; make up your own tune if you don't know the real one. ready? here we go..."God, you're so good, God, you're so good, God, You're so good, You're so good to me." now didn't that feel...good? if you don't love God, you really should give it a try. i'm certain you will find him to be quite lovable indeed.

from the garden of eden
to cheetos, chocolate, coke, and cigars
nightmare in the convenience store
look how far we've fallen and strayed
we're lying in the bed we've made
and claiming that we love it so
kill the matrix, just say no
no i don't love this toxic filth
oozing with diabolical death
but it's already done me in a little bit
my beloved one has a chance
to rise above the smog and stench
and get up off apathy's bench
no longer claiming to love it so
we kill the matrix, we just say no
and even though divinity's garden
we shall never repeat
at least we fight for God's new dream
of dwelling on eden street

it's all about clarity, my friends
let's embrace it now before our journey ends
and slash the nightmare before we go
kill the matrix and just say no

all right cuties, i must let you know that i tried to post last month, but was thwarted by a blogger.com maintenance message saying that the site was temporarily closing down for technical upkeep. of course i had just typed the greatest blog in blog history about my love for my husband, how good life is, and a little elegy for my uncle billy who died recently. well i admit it was more than a little frustrating, seeing that i hadn't saved it even as a draft, so all was lost. and since then i've carried negative vibes to the blog experience. today i officially move beyond that, and back to the blogsphere where i most certainly belong.

to summarize: love for my husband...WOW, God is good, and grace is amazing. i'm stimulated spiritually, mentally, emotionally, intellectually, sexually, artistically, at all these levels on a daily basis. the companionship of this splendid human being never ceases to mega-bless me. our quality of life, though seemingly humble and spartan in the eyes of the status quo, is shooting through the roof. happiness is a strange and wonderful thing to get used to!

how good life is...and busy, too! i have projects up the wazoo this summer. and i love them all! it's just a juggling act to balance and prioritize everything. at the end of each day, i consider it a backhanded compliment from God that all of this "merriment" has been dropped into my lap for me to shepherd and steward.

elegy for uncle billy...it was a bit more eloquent in my now-gone-forever blog effort last month, but i will say this to my uncle billy who i hope can read this anytime he likes. i miss you...you were a laughing light, and like the song says, "don't it always seem to go, that you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone". that's my regret, that we didn't get to connect more as adult peer human beings, but the times we did cross paths, i hold fondly as lessons in high-spirited happiness, and down-to-earth togetherness within...a cool compliment to be called "together" within, since i believe one of the great maladies of mankind is the fact that very few of us seems to bear the fruit of being "together" within. i aspire to these two billy-istic traits, and the fact that they are being brought to my attention right now in my life truly is a stroke of divinity. i would rather be learning about them with my uncle billy here on this planet, hanging out in memphis waiting for me and brandon to come down for blues and BBQ. but God had other plans, and as always, my Heavenly Father knows best. love and peace to the blogsphere cuties!

i can see the tornado inside you
i can hear it within your voice
and it is profound and mystical
it was supposed to take you
all the way over the rainbow
but there is such a thing
as too much brilliance
and too much power
and this, my dear soulmate,
is your blessing and your curse
i oughta know

they're jamming in the basement
i wonder if they know
that divinity is alive
in their underground noodlings
like in "a star is born"
when they played the stage show
then played the bar show
then played another bar alone
just for themselves
the man may have gotten away
but divinity descended

so how oppressed do i feel tonight
like i've been tied to you know what
sing it ben and duane and warren
and now our little bo bice
i got a little happy watching my judy
i chased my cares away
i shouted hallelujah
i thought ahead to judgment day
and i felt oppressed
in the midst of being blessed

my guardian angel for this day
is empress garland herself
whose wondrous force spilled out
in the turbulence and the brokenness
which she willed to occur
even amid the calmness
i must say shame on those murderers
the hollywood bigwigs
who killed her childhood
with up, down, and all around pills
anesthesia was her companion
and torment was her muse

how do you purge and adjust
how do you slay the lust
how do you master the magic
how do you reach the rainbow

the answer is the question
the destination is the journey
the revolution is the revelation
the truth is the love
the love is the truth

that's all for now folks
i've got a rainbow to chase
and to catch

weighing too heavy on this midlife head
is the sick torment of yesterday's dread
so, as many a companion has said,
just change your feelings and choose joy instead

i have news for the pollyanna clan
there is a more truthful, more peaceful plan
of unrealistic pulp, i am no fan,
instead i strive to thrive the best i can

i have more news for you trite pharisees
an honest struggle brings more holy ease
than some fantastic fanatic disease
to exaggerate, and placate, and please

weight gradually is lifted off this head
as grace and gratitude are steadily fed
to this shaggy sinner who forges ahead
basking in true worship before i'm dead
and even more basking after i'm dead

greetings from agony/ecstacy central! for this entry, i would like to share a glimpse of what came from a recent meltdown moment where my husband literally took his shirt off so i could wipe my teary eyes and snotty nose. in case you had any doubt, ecstacy is decisively winning the war in this new era. agony wins battles from time to time, but as i make the daily, hourly choice to "faith forward", i thrive even in tears. i thrive even in ugly snot. i thrive even in stabs and jabs of petty pity. i repeat, ecstacy is winning, and pulling away farther and farther in the lead from all the self-sabotage horses in my race. and as always, i have The Amazing Grace Giver to thank for making this victory perpetually possible. here, my friends, is your eyewitness account:


i suddenly feel about three years old
in the arms of the man who perceives my soul's gold
and preserves clarity of my deepest core
as this weary-eyed woman finds heaven once more

the demons of yesteryear viciously tried
to break my psychic door down and come inside
and eat away boundaries of health, truth, and joy
all balance to jack up, all peace to destroy

though manic-depressive i could easily be
the looney-tune option just isn't for me
cuz somewhere within i know a line's been crossed
and now i am found after i once was lost

new level, new devil, new progress, new pain
surrender the rain and the rein and the reign
a quote from stevie's soulmate is apropos
indeed, my soulshine mate speaks warmth to my woe

so when my frail inner sanctum gets this cold
i suddenly feel about three years old
but there is a man who perceives my soul's gold
and his is the hand i shall forever hold

indulge me in yet another "newlywed rhapsody" moment. i'm entitled since it's only been a little over a month now. and let me tell you, it is a whole new ball game in every area on every level of life. i'm experiencing emotions that are all over the map, from utmost joy to deepest regret. the regret is that i didn't live my life as a singleton in a more disciplined and sacred manner. the regret is that i didn't present a skinnier, healthier, more-together-in-all-ways, secure-in-her-self-esteem bride to the nuptial table. the regret is that my stupid desperation coping choices have steered me way into wilderness excursions that never needed to happen, but that God by his grace is still using for the best. the regret is that i can never get the time back to remedy any of these singleton stupidity moments, and that i will never have the chance now to be the solid and serene single that i was meant to be, and subsequently the solid and serene bride i was meant to be. i lived my own desperate non-housewife reality show for years, and nothing but the grace of God has brought me through to the signpost that now stands before me: blissful marriage and happily ever after/arrow up, broken heart and discontent ever after/arrow down.

well, enough about the regret for now. let's talk about the utmost joy. yes, folks, i, tina the empress of angst, tina the spokesmodel of sorrow, tina the quintessential child of woe, i have joy like i've never felt it before. not that i haven't had the chance to, because after all, i'm the mom of the most extraordinary girl on the planet, with the most extraordinary woman on the planet for a best friend. there is no excuse for me not to have embraced and enjoyed the living, breathing blessings right in front of my face. and over the years in my singing career, i've been the receiver of compliments such as, "you scat like Ella Fitzgerald, you remind me of Phoebe Snow, you sound just like Natalie Cole, you are my favorite singer in the whole world." there is no excuse for me not to have embraced and enjoyed the blessings of my gifts and talents right under my nose. but i haven't, at least not to the fullest, because of joy leaks; joy leaks that sabotaged every relationship i've ever had, especially with God, myself, and the two extraordinary blessing babes.

not anymore. enough is enough. i have allowed these joy leaks to exist for way too long, and as it says in The Wizard Of Oz, i've always had the power! i've always had access to power, within and without, with the potential for greater miracles than any pair of red sparkly shoes could ever give me. Jesus said that he came that we might enjoy life abundantly, and it has been the great downfall of my existence up to now that i have not done this.

i repeat, not anymore. enough is definitely enough. marriage to brandon has been like a big key, unlocking the door that shut out happiness. i don't understand it myself, but now the door is swinging open, with the flashing signpost ahead of me, cheering me and my loved ones on to the greatness for which we have been ultimately designed. joy leaks be gone, dry bones bid despair goodbye, dry fields twist and shout! like our new song says, i thought that no one could surprise me anymore, no one could shake my spirit to the core, no one could look into my weary eyes and see my golden soul. but with brandon the joysprinkler by my side, and renewed inspiration in my heart, i'm happy to say that joy has finally ceased being an alien concept, and is emerging as a vital and viable way of life. i am following the arrows up on the signposts, and by God's grace, i shall bring all my loved ones with me to an adventureland of joy, where all regret is finally and forever forgotten.

welcome to my first blog as a married woman. that still sounds frightfully yet delightfully alien. i love this new development in my life. i love the twists and turns that destiny takes that you could never ever see coming in your wildest imaginings. i love the compassionately compelling man i call "mister velvet steel" named brandon findlay. brandon is, as my friend jeanne would say, "beyond beyond". he truly makes me feel "like a natural woman". our relationship is a miracle, our courtship was a miracle, and we give all glory to God for every moment of the sacred magic we've been so blessed to experience.

now having said all that, i must be honest and say guess what? happily ever after-ville has a few chinks in its hyped-up embellished armor. it's a huger-huge bucket of ice, not just water but wounding bits of crystal reality, heaped upon my too-tender head daily. how come i never knew before how utterly childish and selfish i can be? how come i never realized how sedated i had become to the vitality and viscera of life? how come i let myself get so settled and hardened like an old dusty sculpture ready for the cast-off shelf at some spiritual garage sale? a Batman word comes to my mind right now--ZOWIE! that's the only way i can describe this feeling of a liquifying blast of heat, light, passion, adrenalin, and overpowering love; instantly rescuing me from the stoney stillness of i-give-up, and immediately transporting me into a state of supple organic hopefulness that i thought was gone forever from the tina-existence.

td jakes said that sometimes our miracle eras overlap our mistake eras. that's the way it is with me now. the miracles of new passion do not suddenly cancel out the mistakes of old poop. so that's another facet of what i'm dealing with right now. and i am doing my best to worship through it all daily and "faith forward"--faith as a verb. my extraordinary new spouse is an outstanding support, drying my tears when needed, kicking me in the patootie when needed, singing otis redding to me when needed, just smiling at me when needed.

i hope i don't turn into one of these annoying lovey-dovey married types i've always despised. but i do want to be a model for all the best things that marriage can be. God has blessed us with something rare and precious, to be treasured and shared. just when i thought grace couldn't get any more amazing...ZOWIE!

in a world where:

thousands upon thousands of people have just died as victims of the most tumultuously catastrophic natural disaster of our time...

others have died in the ongoing war on terrorism that continues to be what i suspected it was when it began -- a no-win situation...

millions of hearts are breaking and eroding everyday as the sin'dustries (sinful industries like pornography and drug trafficking) steal, kill, and destroy us bit by bit in legally sanctioned moral decay...

millions of dollars that could be helping to heal our world are needlessly and obliviously squandered on "entertainment", like celebrity salaries and lifestyle expenses, as degradingly gross (grossly poor values, grossly poor quality, and/or both) movies and music that have no business in our cultural consciousness is continually being intravenously injected into our psychic databases for the sake of godless greed...

in a world where all these situations and more are begging for my attention and action:

i'm freaking out about what candle will be on what table in what spot on the platform for my little wedding this saturday.

perspective is the saving grace
of savage weeks like this
where truth is at risk of theft
by my petty distress

thank God i'm marrying a man
who leads me to this grace
and lifts me kicking and screaming
to perspective's higher place

i'm going to blog one more time before the big day...let's hope it's still with a voice of grace in the face of 55 million micro demands staring me down, well maybe a little less than that. slow down and love, slow down and love, slow down and love, clear your mind, clear your soul, let peace gently take control...of me, of my amazing new marriage, of all my loved ones, of this broken but beautiful world.

surreal...this time next week i will be a wife...i will have a husband...surreal...in the best of ways!

merry christmas, happy holidays, and craaaaazy kwanzaa!

mistakes and miracles overlap
upon my rainbow psychic map
and as transition waves and pleads
i need to follow where hope leads
into the strong tender arms of
my sexy godly precious love
who radiates pure holy grace
in each simple smile on his face

happy wedding to me, happy wedding to me, i will try to blog one more time before the big day!

it is so not convenient
to be a powderkeg princess
at this age and stage of the tinalife
age?
probably a little over my halfway point
but still possessing a few giggly wiggly
sweetbirds of youth
stage?
about to be wed united joined
in creatively non-traditional matrimony
to the absolute sweetest birdman of youth
but i must repeat
it is so not convenient
to be a powderkeg princess
at this transformational fork in the road

so she says 'what happens now?'
as she pingpongs between joy and sorrow
all through those sloppy drops
of involuntary emotion
in the powderkeg moments
where she looks to the sky
and in that bittersweet radiance
briefly tastes the hope

so she says 'what happens now?'
as she finally realizes
powderpuffdom is gone for good
as powderkegdom plants
its big butt on her heart's big throne
not very romantic or resourceful
or soulshiny or sugareelike
but still she looks to the sky
waiting with bono for the dawn
briefly tasting the hope

she slowly shyly shakes herself awake
and look what the sassy soul cat dragged in
a strategic little visit from an old friend
quasimodo shmasimodo
i thought you'd forgotten me
she thought he'd forgotten her
but he reached out his hand
and he touched her lips
and he preached a two second sermon

slow down and love

how do you settle a frazzled soul
how do you dismantle an annoying powderkeg
or even an atomic bomb?
you really don't even need eleven songs
although they're awesome
especially numbers four and eleven
all you need is a two second sermon
not just any but the right one
at the right time
by the right person
in the right way

slow down and love

are you nuts?

slow down and love

maybe i'm the one who's nuts

slow down and love

there's no maybe about it

slow down and love

OK

thanksgiving is my absolute favorite holiday. shame on those evil marketing villains for attempting to snuff it out. let's face it...it isn't as easy to exploit because 1) it is a truly spiritual day about gratitude without nearly as much of the hoopla (except the food and football of course), and 2) it's an "uglier" holiday in comparison to the garishly bright overkill of the october and december occasions. personally, i think the earthy harvest tones of thanksgiving provide an excellent respite from the consumeristic colors of mega-stimulation. and the sentiment is one which i continually fall back on as a major ongoing strategy of reprogramming for my soul. in the face of all the good, the bad, and the ugly of the tumult that is my existence, simply pausing to simply say thanks to the simply amazing grace giver is what life is all about. i am nothing, i have nothing, i know nothing, i look forward to nothing, without the inundation of blessings i've received from the one and only true and living God, over the course of my 39-year labyrinthine lifetime. yet since i have been so incredibly blessed, and will continue to be for the rest of my days spent gallivanting in this miry clay, i must respond with gratitude every chance i get. it's been like breath to me in these months of hungry humbleness and humble hunger. gratitude has been the wind beneath these fragile demented, tormented wings. gratitude has been the magic carpet upon which this tortured, fractured soul has continually been joyriding. finally, gratitude has been the wonderful watery wave carrying me over the falls, as in job falls, money falls, relationship falls, integrity falls, disillusionment falls, depression falls, suicidal impulse falls. and it's a wave i'm going to keep right on riding...the healing breath, the refreshing wind, the enlivening wave, the saving grace of gratitude. happy thanksgiving not just this week but every blessing-filled day.

LYRICALERT

an ocean of every other man i ever knew
pales in comparison to an ounce of you...

all right, if that isn't love, then i'm marilyn monroe. (actually, she and i probably have more than a few things in common; such as playful flirtation mixed with insecurity and joie de vivre mixed with self-sabotage). but back to my lyric...last blog said LOVE IS HARD, and yes we know it's true. but it's worth it, especially with a pure beautiful knight at my side like the subject of these 2 lines. he continually lavishes me with everything i need at precisely the moment it is needed, like compassion for my stupidity, clarity for my confusion, comfort for my sadness, and calmness for my chaotically frenzied not-accustomed-to-happiness heart. i wish for everyone the splendid companionship i am so blessed to have, and i pray that we will overwhelm all our loved ones, romantic and non-romantic, with extravagant truth-telling faith-building soul-healing love.

love is hard. truth is hard. selfishness and lies are easy. no, i guess they're kinda hard, too. gee, if we're looking for easy lives with ripple-less homogenous mediocre cocooning, we need to think again. every instant of existence has the power to heal with love and truth, or harm with selfishness and lies. i am finding this out in bigger ways than ever before as an enormous magnifying glass called love gently yet urgently descends upon me. it sucks to discover the presence of absurdly foolish bizarre mental spiritual and emotional atrocity in my soul (AKA gunk!). this gunk has clogged up the flow of love in my life for way way way too long, love for myself, love for my daughter, love for my best friend, love for other friends, love for family, love for strangers, love for God---whose kindness and grace to me are an everpresent reminder that his sustaining, soothing force throughout my entire 39 years of life is far more than just Good Orderly Direction. but back to love and the gunk. now the gunk is clogging up an amazing new love experience in my life and it is hard. it's terrifying to see love and truth being poured like Drano down my soul drain. sick parts of me have actually enjoyed the stopped-up state. but each day i face the choice of two difficult paths, the lie path or the love path. the love path is terrifyingly transformational. the lie path is too. in my life it already has been, in ways that have stolen, killed, and destroyed my joy and freedom for way way way too long. so today i choose the love path, the journey of precious pain that is slowly reclaiming, reviving, and renewing this girl, through daily de-programming and de-clogging. love and truth are hard, but i'll be damned if i allow gunk to ruin what is meant to be an utterly amazing experience. so bring on the Drano, i am rising up and moving on to true love and lovely truth.

LYRICALERT

people reach out for love in different ways
we grab at straws to fill our days
we miss what love is all about
thank God i've finally found out
heaven to me is to rest in the arms of my soulfully lovely man...

yes, snoopy noses, that's about a relationship i am in right now. but more to the point, that's about discovering and embracing the simple things in life. i cannot adequately convey how liberating it is to release my fingers from their irrationally immature grasp on soulless fluff cleverly disguised as necessity. the less i rely on the beastly adorable addictive impulse to squeeze everything so tightly, like i am so able to control it with my bottomless inner fountain of wisdom, the more i am happy, the more i am content, the more i laugh, the more i enjoy joy, the more i truly taste heaven, and i like it very much. for all you clingy controllers and controlling clingers, me and jerry maguire's mentor dickey fox would like to wish you our kind of success.

how would you like to be born again, again?
how would you like to touch the genesis drain
and bewitch the sabotage dragons at long last
into melting like wicked witches of the west?

how would you like to have a resurgence,
a prosperity-blessed party of emergence,
with all the guests who've patiently been knocking,
seated at the table of honor where they belong?

how would you like to smile a real smile?
i mean a big toothy mary tyler moore
turn the world on kind of smile?
this, my dears, would make your soul come.

how would you like to be free
in a state of ever-growing radiance
and ever-glowing transformation
saying a continuous goodbye to crap?

after all these years and tears and fears
and rains and pains and chains
and obsession and oppression and depression...
how would you like to be born again, again?

she says she feels the hope
slipping silently away
she says she feels the help
fading like sky blue to gray
she says she feels the hunger
begging in autumn dismay
she says she feels the hell
hugging her each loveless day

i hear the hope spiraling as
a heart strives for release
i hear the help come screeching to
a halt just short of peace
i hear the hunger as it makes
an art of sick torment
i hear the hell sing and dance
with her disillusionment

i say that all i know about hope
is that it's still there
i say that all i know about help
is in my next prayer
i say that all i know about hunger
is in what i feed me
i say that all i know about hell
is when i don't need me

much more to be said, no more to be revealed, this time i'll be discreet, and let my lips stay sealed. bye invisible friends.

today i feel like using burgers as a metaphor of how intense life can get sometimes. let's face it, we generally stay in cheeseburger mode, representing the ordinary hassles and annoyances of the semi-happy meal we call life. then there are those double cheeseburger days where it's called exponentially escalating aggravation. and then my friends, brace yourself for this greasily toxic reality...there are the WHOPPERS. yes, those moments where you need more than two big grizzly adams hands to handle them. the catalytic catastophes, the dreadful strokes of sabotage, the times of turbulence and terrorism within the world and my own crazy world of wonder, wealth, and woe. whoppers...how does one deal with these signposts of complexity, bewilderment, and desire? in this ragamuffin girl's crazy whopper-infested world, i'm grateful that God has tattooed a certain passage on my brain that gets triggered at the onset of whopper warning signs. it is isaiah 6:1-8, and i highly recommend it for much needed perspective in times of whopper hopelessness. basically here's how i will break it down: i am crazy, this world and all it contains is crazy, and the sanity i seek from the source of true love and loving truth seems way too unattainable and unrealistic. so my whoppers present me with the ongoing choice: heal or hell? wow, good preaching, tina...that little phrase bears repeating, so here goes. heal or hell? number one--me crazy: heal or hell? number two--world crazy: heal or hell? number three--believing in sanity is crazy: heal or hell? i pray that in all these moments of wistful whopper wackiness, our choices will be what they need to be, channeled toward the healing touches and tastes of grace.

after a drought, rain
after a death, resurrection
after a pleasure, pain
after a pain, perfection

long space of silence
long flatline of fear
long interlude of brokenness
long clog becoming clear

rising in alien hope
rising in perfect flaws
rising with the startling dawn
rising to affect the cause

not over till it's over
not futile till it's cold
not hopeless till i say so
not dead while i'm still gold

hi blog world. here's my re entry into the bleach. raging aging seized my pen, but praise God i'm free again. read between each silly line, and embrace the angst that's mine. welcome back to me, i must keep on keeping on in this blog universe, for the brain drain sublime. i feel better already. it's so nice to have me back where i belong.

(volume 40 maybe...we'll see)

no more dung to shovel
no more pork to chop
finale of trouble
final petal drop

headbanging on this wall
sustains me no more
losing battles makes me
want to win my war

transitions of every kind possess both pleasure and pain. my so-lovely-it's-scary supermodel child just read me an incredible piece that she wrote about what the last week of the world's existence would be like. wish you could hear it. the last sentence gripped me the most, presumably taking place at the final finality: "and the buzzing glow enveloped them all". wow, i cannot adequately describe the excitement, horror, amazement, terror, and undeniable awe that her words evoked in my heart. giving birth, that's really what it always means, giving birth again and again, in the simple and the profound, in the complex and the cut-and-dried, transitions are always filled with those labor pains and little earthquakes that precede "the buzzing glow". the above excerpt refers to a poem about my own desire for a painful kind of transition, the big one that transitions you away from The Really Big One. you may never read the rest of the work, which outlines more obviously and disturbingly the transition i have in mind (think tom cruise at the end of 'vanilla sky'). but daily, even hourly, i choose to rein myself in for the longer haul, avoiding the big one, so that i can eventually feel "the buzzing glow" of The Really Big One envelope me. that is the hope, the promise, that fuels this struggle to keep struggling.

from the best book: "no discipline is pleasant at the time but painful...later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it."

LYRICALERT

on that day, i'll shout my freedom loud and strong
on that day, my soul will sing its finest song
on that day, i'll live in joy where i belong
on that day, my chains will all be gone

someone died that i hardly knew, yet the impact cut me to the core. this is part of a lyric that burst forth from the psychic buildup of inner shock and sorrow. we had only a few moments of acquaintance, but the quality of them easily led me to believe we would have become great friends at the rate we were going. suddenly losing someone only 36 years old who had so much more to say and play is just an unnatural sensation. he played the sax...you might say, and pardon the cliche but it's perfect, he had phenomenal sax appeal. our encounters gave witness to a remarkable simpatico between us, musically and non-musically. and now the reprogramming begins: no more running into "gangbusters" downtown--that was my name for him, and anyone who knew him for more than 30 seconds can testify to its appropriateness, no more improvisational give and take, no more of that one-of-a-kind magic, so briefly glimpsed, yet so powerfully and unforgettably experienced. bye gangbusters, you really are In His Presence now, shouting your freedom loud and strong, playing your soul's finest song, living in joy where you belong, with all your chains finally forever gone.

this has been brewing for a few days, and i "hope" you will be impacted by the metaphor. it's so strange to see our icons leave this world, and i had to go somewhere with my random musings, so why not here? "hope" to see you in the big town, bob; this one's for you...

today, hope died
bob, that is

hope drew my attention to
the bright side, the goofy side
hope transformed my thoughts
to flying up from falling down
hope brought teeny unexpected
smiles and chuckles
hope taught me about humor
and its power as a coping tool
hope helped me and all of us
hang on in times of war
all kinds of war
hope showed me how to
cherish and reminisce
hope modelled class
and grace under pressure
hope distracted me from doldrums
and gave me giggles instead
hope replaced my blahs
with ha-ha's
hope was a pillar, a wonder, a star
hope sprinkled joy dust into this clay jar

today, hope died
bob, that is

as i was approaching the soul danger zone
in mercy, you tossed me a two-sided bone
on the verge of numbness to the nth degree
in wisdom, you had alternate plans for me

one side was a trip to smokey joe's cafe
an invitation to shake, shout, and sashay
an opus of frenzy i don't touch too often
an effort to avoid the sad joyless coffin

the other side was a glimpse of a dreamcoat
that kept my titanic much longer afloat
choosing forgiveness and faith over hate
joseph turned out to be quite a soulmate

it could be a prelude of a brand new start
or the last blast of passionate joy from my heart
but i'll always be thankful that down from your throne
you tossed belladonna a two-sided bone

that's it...i've had it...i've been pushed to my limit of pop music disgust, and i'm about to do some serious ragging, so fasten your seat belts, it's going to be a bumpy blog!

"baby if you give it to me, i'll give it to you, i know what you want, you know i got it..." cooed in breathy desperation for a hit by none other than the possessor of one of the greatest vocal treasures in pop history, miss mariah carey, who could marry those beautiful vocal cords to any number of worthwhile songs, yet resorts to the ashanti school of minimum talent, maximum paycheck recording. sorry suckers, i'm a bit miffed by this. in a recent interview with jay-z and 50-cent, they talked about how we've got to just face it, the world wants sex, drugs, and violence in their songs, so it's about supplying the seedy demand for trash. sorry suckers, i'm a bit miffed by this. i challenge you to listen to casey kasem or rick dees sometime and check out the pitiful excuses for art that we are being fed for the sake of you know what...ka-ching! where are the artists who are truly aspiring to the utmost levels of creativity to uplift the human spirit? where are the revolutionaries who seek to rise above the smog of the recording industry landscape?

i love music. i love the arts. i love the power they contain to impact our worlds and the big world for greatness and positivity and healing and fun and truth and peace. to be blunt, i am seeing the prostitution of beautiful raw creativity day after psychic-debris-filled day. i despise hearing astonishing...excuse me but that busta/mariah song just came on as i'm typing this...how poetic is that? that's like the dark spirits trying to spit in my face and distract me from typing the truth. well it ain't gonna work, babies. now as i was saying, i DESPISE hearing astonishing God-given talent like Christina Aguilera and many others, uniting the power of their phenomenal instruments with the equivalent of artistic pigslop.

i'm going over to a little eastside park to teach some kids about music tomorrow. what a challenge to meet them where they are at...singing their juvenile praises of pigslop...to take them where they need to be...at a better place of greater artistic fulfillment, at least for one moment in time. we will play games, laugh--i hope, act crazy, and ultimately give our attention to a different kind of artistic approach, that rises above the "casting pearls before swine" syndrome.

now my girl beyonce is on. lest you think i dis all da pop out dere, let me tell you that one of my new faves is miss beyonce, a huge talent, who always seems glamorous rather than gaudy, stable rather than sleazy, and just exuding a joy and inner glow through her performances. and she is really aspiring to be a whole and complete talent, exploring different artistic styles and mediums, as well as composing and producing. that's a strategy i can get behind 100%.

believe me, i have so-o-o-o much more to say on this subject, but for now i will end with one last anecdote. i went to an inner city park last night and did a little concert. as i was chatting up the kids, attempting to interact with them and connect with their culture, we talked about songs they liked. they even wanted to come to the microphone and be stars themselves for a moment. so i said fine, as long as you can choose a song that has lyrics that i will like...meaning non-profane, non-obscene, non-gangsta, non-thug, non-bump and grind. guess what...none of us could even think of any that would pass my test, so none of them got to come up to the mike. if that doesn't strike you as at least a little bit sad, then i'd like to congratulate you on receiving my "numb and dumb" award. please slap yourself, pour water over your head, anything to wake up and realize how foolishly we're squandering and surrendering the awesome forces of art, and watching our children turn into foulmouthed porn-flick supporters right before our eyes. no i am unfortunately not exaggerating. that is what we're seeing right now, and i'm sick of it. let the record show, i am devoting my life to the utter annihilation of crap that was supposed to be creativity. it grieves me to the core of my being every time i smell the repulsive stench of compromise in music and all of the arts. so i guess if i decide to stay in this whacked-out world, i'm going to have to be a force for the complete elimination of this vomitous compromise. stay tuned...there's plenty more where this came from. sorry fence-sitters and apathetic non-wavemakers, i can no longer be silent about such critically important matters. go ahead and rationalize if that makes you feel better, but when you find yourself immersed in a vat of rancid artistic jelly, don't come running to me. i'll be safely ensconced on my mountaintop of idealism, tossing down postcards to the masses below that say, "having a WONDERFUL time--wish you were here, BUT YOU HAD YOUR CHANCE, AND YES, I DEFINITELY TOLD YOU SO!"

(currently unavailable in a poetry volume -- maybe #40 eventually)

i just heard his sons are supposedly dead
i'm alarmed at my joy in the face of this dread
i know he's been evil and killed a multitude
but smiling at this tragedy just seems rude
nobody wins within a war game
no one can stay obliviously the same
i grieve the options of long long ago
when compassion thwarted the rash overthrow
when relationships were tended with care
instead of mistreating our kin over there
and millions of lost loveless moments have led
to this season of lying in conflict's bed
i guess i'm referring to more than just us
or myself or him or the hothead fuss
i grieve the option above every other
the greatest response of loving one another
what does love mean in such a twisted mess
maybe it means grieving more and gloating less
maybe it means remembering what matters
instead of rejoicing when foes writhe in tatters
i know it's a fight we're itching to win
but let's take time to define victory again

LYRICALERT

when you look at me, what do you see
and how will you remember me
a detour or your destiny
the way things were supposed to be
the face that used to smile for you
the eyes that used to shine for you
the love that used to see you through
who's gonna see you through now?

the average person will not be able to guess who/what these words are about. that's just as well because i can hardly embrace their existence myself. old song...they say that breaking up is hard to do, now i know, i know that it's true, don't say that this is the end, instead of breaking up i wish that we were making up again. breaking up, making up, those are the tides of life. and although the tides get high, i'm still holding on, 'cause i'm gonna be my own number one. ps--i dare you to try and beat me in the red box music version of trivial pursuit!

LYRICALERT

i can't speak for you, my friend
but i can take care of myself
i've wasted too much precious time
sittin' on the zombie shelf
so believe me when i say
i know, i know what it's like
but i got some advice to give
so you can begin to live
so straighten up your heart and fly right

it's time for you to
do something unexpected
don't just stand there unaffected
surprise your soul with an attitude of love
get a taste of revival, you might like it

dictionary.com defines revival as "a restoration to use, acceptance, activity, or vigor, after a period of obscurity or quiescence." that's further affirmation that "revival" is a word with my name on it. hope you can say the same, friend; and let's all get off our zombie shelves for good. there's a difference between pausing for self and pausing on a shelf.

(from manifest mystery volume #35)

born in pain, i relied
on my instinct to get by
it did not help me deal
with being BLACK

born as jewel, blessing tree
soul dysfunction tarnished me
it revealed wounds unhealed
from being BLACK

all the good, all the bad
all the lies that drove me mad
all the colorquest confusion
that the bloodlines never had
but when i find life redefined
there is joy transcending sad
so phenomenal am i
wondrous power gets me high

born to fly beside you
in the sky with love so true
i am free, i am proud
to be BLACK

(from manifest mystery volume #36)

love is like a little death
its wind dispels the selfish breath
and rocks the kingdom i had planned
that's when i start to understand...

wow, this excerpt grips my guts and bears witness as caustic, killing truth. have you ever experienced the agony of love? how about the glory of love? i can hear that old song in my head...you got to give a little, take a little, and let your poor heart break a little. that's the story of, that's the glory of love. boy, if it were only that simple. maybe it is...

i like this little desperation musing...it comes from some really deep places, and i surprised myself at how poignant it became as it sprung to life right after the death of a tv icon:

(from manifest mystery volume #38)

solitary fingertips
reaching out for phantom grips
imagination runs wild
bumming out my inner child

saw that mister rogers died
condolences to his bride
now that she is on her own
that means we are both alone

tinted glasses taint all views
wet perception warps all views
no matter what it might be
it's about the tears of me

cheddar chips won't soothe the plight
of a bloody hard day's night
no supply for soul demands
of these bloated unheld hands

fifth of july...red, white, and blue withdrawal. call me non-patriotic, but that color combo appeals to me far less than it did before. please don't misunderstand, i feel blessed in many ways to live in america, i am thankful for the freedom and abundance we have here. but in the last few years, the deepest gravitation of my heart is toward things global, and not just our own back yard. i think pride in your team, family, or cause is to be embraced and commended, but not not not at the expense of seeing the bigger picture, the greater principle. it brings me down when i think of my/our american overconsumption compared to the hunger elsewhere in the world. it brings me down when i think of my/our avoidance and/or apathy toward gross oppression and suffering elsewhere in the world as i sit in the comfortable quality of life i call poverty and the rest of the world would call paradise. it brings me down when i sense this attitude of supremacy and superiority when we really have so much to learn from the ways of the rest of our so-called poorer earth-citizens. it brings me down, but ultimately lifts me way up, to gradually snap out of certain programmed responses that have kept me in false, frozen paradigms for way way way too long. i will be very candid and state that overblown campy pseudo-patriotism is in that category for me. my gratitude is sky-high for the extraordinary life sacrifices made by our soldiers past and present. but i have come to believe that a certain line gets crossed, and what should have stayed as healthy, enriching, perspective-filled pride erupts into this volcano of propagandous mush. go ahead and give me a mid-year bah-humbug if you wish, but these are my authentic fifth of july reflections, and the kaleidoscopic colors of the world are far more beautiful to me than red, white, and blue. to end this on a lighter note, get a vision from one of my songs from "joseph and the amazing technicolor dreamcoat" that i'm currently performing. picture a world of "red and yellow and green and brown and scarlet and black and ochre and peach and ruby and olive and violet and fawn and lilac and gold and chocolate and mauve and cream and crimson and silver and rose and azure and lemon and russet and gray and purple and white and pink and orange and blue." that's what i call moving from a fourth to a fifth of july mentality. it's a mysterious adjustment process, but i like it, and i'll still gladly suck on a sweet red, white and blue frozen bomb pop once a year in honor of the holiday.

may you live for the best reasons
faith, hope, and love
may you give at the best levels
beyond and above
may you fly the rapturous skies
that frightened fools forgot
may you cry when it's appropriate
and even when it's not
may you shine your silly strange light
in each dark land
may you find wisdom and wildness
strolling hand in hand
may you know that you can succeed
even when you fail
may you go where there is no path
and leave a trail

my continual best wishes for everyone in my little world, and God's BIG WORLD. be blessed, y'all!

smokey joseph--part 1--smokey!

my experience as a part of the des moines playhouse production of "smokey joe's cafe" gave me so much growth and insight. here is my feeble attempt to capture just a few of the lessons from this marvelously catalytic time. 5 distinct phases emerged in the tina process for this project, phases that can be applied on and off the diva stage.

phase 1--badness
at the beginning of a new endeavor we all have to start somewhere. i think of nicole kidman in my favorite role of hers in the film "to die for". she's attempting to sell herself "like gangbusters" for a job at a tv station, and although the position is only for a glorified gopher, she says "do you have any idea where edward r murrow started?...well, neither do i, but i don't think it was at the top, do you?"
so it's a healthy thing to go through being at the flatline, zero knowledge, needing 100% training, quite simply...badness. in the show, it was dauntingly humbling for someone of my age to go back to school in some ways, after being increasingly affirmed and embraced as a pro. it was so beneficial for me to work through this phase and be forced out of resting on my laurels of laziness.

phase 2--basic
this is where you find out what you're really made of, your inherent wiring, your initial responses, your natural impulses. it was a serendipitous thrill to observe myself reacting to all the newness surrounding me, new musical material, new people, new sights, sounds, and exotic fragrances of the sacred space called theatre. it was one of those times where i said thanks to God because although i'm not where i want to be, i've definitely come a long way from where i was in the past, and my basic instincts were great evidence of that (and great reminders of how far i still aspire to grow).

phase 3--building
so if basic instinct was the foundation, the building phase was next, and so incredibly formative. i pushed myself in refining and tweaking ways to develop and expand my abilities, vocally, physically, socially, etc. they say there is one room that has no ceiling, the room for improvement. so it was time for me to push my long unchallenged artistic boundaries, technical, philosophical, and otherwise, to give birth to a performance i will always remember fondly with pride.

phase 4--building plus
self plus shepherding, critique, and strategically chosen tools and resources. this was not the time to declare myself beyond the help of others. this is a pivotal ingredient most of us miss out on in our attempts to deal with the issues of our lives. i was fortunate to be in a situation where the assistance of other people, places, and things was absolutely essential. this forced me to step out of myself, and become open and receptive to the wise advice of outsiders (most importantly, my director, who was nothing less than sensational).

phase 5--building super plus
self plus resources plus the magic of the audience presence in the moment. this combustive interaction provides a whole new layer of sparkle that you just can't get otherwise as a performer. in life, that's called relationships. that's called divine encounters. that's called rubbing up against the rest of the human race on a daily basis, being transformed by the touches. it's funny how i thrive so much on that special kind of audience energy in the performance setting, but rarely tap into it off stage in my personal life, and in fact, sometimes go out of my way to avoid it at all costs. but the more i let myself be transformed by this abandonment of control and loss of expectation, the more i...well, i've just got to say it...the more i thrive in joy!

being in the show was such a blessing to me for so many reasons. i could recount story after story of the memories and precious moments. my way-too-short visit to smokey joe's cafe was well worth the trip.

the vinegar of dealing
with soul disharmony
confounds the honey wish
for holistic destiny
tasting the bitter fragments
of spoiled incompleteness
continually thwarts love
and poisons happiness

a brief poetic word that sums up so much of what i am constantly consumed with, all my seemingly impossible dreams of wholeness and integration, in life, in love, in art, in faith. this truly is one of my magnificent obsessions. any thoughts to me on this subject are especially welcomed, so seek me out, you truth-seeking soulmates!

from the juicy prolific psyche of the ranting non-diva...recent excerpts from my future poetic anthologies:

excerpt 1 -- from 38:
there's a new game in town, and it's called beat the clock
not easy for those of us who've been around the block...

...the ticking torments me with angst-ridden regret
but this non-fat lady will sing, so don't count me out yet

excerpt 2 -- from 39:
there is something to be said for just living
and not analyzing everything into the ground
there is something that brings comfort in just being
and bucking the system in which we're bound
there is something really cool about just chilling
and learning to relax, go with the flow
there is something extra wise about just breathing
and knowing that it's okay not to know

my prayer for us all: breathe...chill...be...live

wow, i've got so many thoughts to share, but with a crashed computer and a consuming schedule, i've been a little preoccupied elsewhere. but i couldn't resist sharing a piece of our recent "sweet sixteen" celebration with the world. dove, i love you...

16 Things I Love About DOVE

1. her devotion to her friends
2. her attention to health and fitness
3. her sense of style
4. her articulate way of communicating
5. her kindness
6. her voice, speaking and singing
7. her artistry and creativity
8. her laughter
9. her grace and forgiveness for my many screw-ups
10. her gentleness
11. her stride when she walks
12. her cosmetic expertise (inherited from me of course)
13. her intelligence and deep thoughts
14. her eyes
15. her smile
16. absolutely everything else!

Happy Birthday to my Sweet Sixteen year-young peace child - you are even more miraculous than ever!

"i used to feel those guardian angels in the skies; but those angels have become like ghosts before my eyes; and every line of every song i thought i knew; has left me standing empty and cold without a clue; here in the dark...," from a new composition called "faith in the dark" by me

existing in what seems to be a wisdom-less state is akin to being severely fastened with a shoddy rope to a scratchy pole. after a few attempts to dislodge my soul from this "paradise"; some attempts pathetically haphazard, others positively herculean; it feels best for me to just stand for a while. any more struggling while in this disgraceful condition known as "beyond my wit's end", and i will metamorphose into a monster akin to the incredible hulk's twin sister. today i connect with the biblical ranting of a faithful yet flawed man called job (especially in these scriptures: job 10:18-22 and job 12:13-25). job's story gives me some hope and comfort because here's a guy who hardly ever did anything wrong, and yet lost everything in a God-initiated avalanche of affliction. talk about "why do bad things happen to good people", here's an extremely prime example. so as my inquiring mind tapdances along with my fingers across this keyboard, i ponder the fate of the longsuffering mr. job, the fate of our peace-deprived world, and the fate of me--both longsuffering and peace-deprived. and like those big words flashing on the screen during those old batman tv shows (zowie!), three letters from this keyboard fly across the path of my oppressed but still sparkly eyeballs. L. A. B. which further expand out to the words Learning, Affirming, and Breathing. contorted upon an aged and jagged pole seems like an unlikely location for any of those three words to be accomplished with any degree of excellence. but here i stand in wisdom-less stillness, LEARNING how to learn, AFFIRMING my own need for affirmation, and BREATHING the succulent force that keeps me and the world turning, the potently anonymous power we call breath. so what? what good is esoteric rhetoric to a soul on a pole? "be still and know that I am God...silence is golden...stop and smell the roses...let go and let God...," and all those annoyingly applicable axioms intermittently stream across my consciousness like rolling horizontal internet broadcasts. yet today only three words stick. a "soul pole" moment is indeed a LAB, a place of experimentation and education, where i LEARN (as reluctance gives way to relief), i AFFIRM (as self-pity gives way to serenity--i mean the kind that is nitty-gritty rooted in the trenches of firsthand weedpruning, not the namby-pamby vacant sloganeering of certain industries of "deep thoughts with Jack Handey" pap crap), and finally i BREATHE, as toxicity gives way to truth, and a silent song emerges with lyrics like: relax, you're ok, you're a mess but you're my child, and you're ok, because i'm in control of this, not you. today in all your soul pole LABs (because after all, every single one of us experiences these sanctuaries of suffering in some form on a daily basis), i wish you learning, affirming, and breathing. i am so weird! and so is my weird ranting! God, I pray that you will make sense of these thoughts and feelings for the healing of hurting hearts, including my own, so that even in the dark places, we will hold on to our faith, and steadfastly refuse to let go.

and once again, this melancholy baby ruefully identifies with today's weather...the startling annoyance of the April snowstorm. driving in the treacherously transformed traffic flow, my life's tv screen has suddenly switched from technicolor to black, white, and murky grey. but even in this i find a fascination. the few colors surviving the burial pop out at me with increased impact, like the little girl's red coat in Schindler's List. and so it is with this season of my life. yuck, i'm annoyed that i used that melodramatic "life season" cliche, but alas, it stands as rock solid truth. anyway, i am gently lifted above the encouragement waterline when i remember that, yes, there are colors that have popped out in this "bliss disguised as blizzard" time. faith flashes, spirit slivers, and tiny bright blossoms of unflinching love perking up from the slushy ground below my trudging begrudging feet. but even amid this winter blunderland, i saw the forecast. it said 60 degrees by the weekend, which seems like an eternity from monday, but a hop, skip, and jump in the context of the whole space-time continuum. so it won't last, and it is melting even as we speak. simply put, i can handle it. this startling annoyance of trauma and tragedy. it's do-able, and i am doing it like a good old heartland tough broad, who is tempered year after blustery year with these events, yet instinctively reacts to them like it's impossible, uncope-able, shockwavy virgin territory. please may i just once get it through my head, "in this world you will have tribulation, but be of good cheer, i have overcome the world," says Jesus, the One I've supposedly given my life to, and the Reliable One I supposedly trust wholeheartedly. yes, April snowstorms happen, and i am surprised by non-joy. but i can handle it, i MUST handle it. as my world turns, may the days of my life be ruled by The Guiding Light who reminds me of how bold and beautiful i am meant to be--in the midst of it all, rain, snow, sleet, or hail. spiritually speaking, how we deal with the WEATHER determines WHETHER or not we thrive. this strong-willed Iowa climate continually teaches us the lesson of the great jazz composer Fats Waller: "one never knows, do one." so it is best to keep our snow stamina and strategy as handy as the Burt's Bees Lip Balm under the dashboard. i leave you with musings from a new millenium would-be theologian from a certain paisley park: "sometimes it snows in April, sometimes i feel so bad, sometimes i wish life was never ending, but all good things, they say, will pass." sounds like the artist currently known as prince is a melancholy baby like me.

hello, beautiful people: a little shorty poem today for you. be safe, be well, and be at peace...

HAPPY

happy to be incomplete; happy to not have to rhyme
happy to forgive myself for every needless, careless crime
happy to enjoy the big world; happy to flee little cliques
happy to spin like a gypsy with my mentor stephanie lynn nicks
happy to push past old programming; happy to switch and exhale
happy to win even when i lose as wisdom and healing prevail
happy to just be myself; happy to just be alive
happy to worship without constraint; and abundantly, joyfully thrive

i don't know. do you feel as ashamed as i do saying those words sometimes? and to the most basic questions, like: how are you, how's your day going, what's new with you, how's the job search going, how's the church search going, what's your take on the issues of the day, etc. lately it seems as if every question asked of me at any level of the tinalife provokes this oh-so-valedictorian response...I DON'T KNOW. Remember that movie "Reality Bites" with Winona "let's get past the whole crime crap and remember what a truly fine actress she is" Ryder? When she's standing at the podium speaking as the head of her class at her graduation, and regarding how to face the future, she says "the answer is...i don't know." I'm starting to move past the initial shame of that statement, and onward to the freedom that is found in what theologians call "the cloud of unknowing." it is an exhilarating exhale of grace to realize, it's ok for me not to know. in fact, it is a declaration of the utmost honesty, integrity, and truth. simply put, as the human finite beings we are, we are not capable of possessing complete and meaningful answers to any of life's questions on our own. to this i say, "cool!" because i'm not the mistress of my universe, your universe, or the big weird wild universe in which we live. so next time you are tempted to save face, or dive into a serious image management moment, try being honest. no matter what your combo plate of circumstance is, it is not the time for phony interaction and self-delusion about anything ever again. wake up, me! wake up, you! wake up, us! let's throw up our hands and admit it once and for all, WE DON'T KNOW! Hallelujah, for once we get to that delicious liberty, we get in touch with the one who really does know.

sing, sing a song, sing out loud, sing out strong, sing of good things not bad, sing of happy not sad. sing, sing a song, make it simple to last your whole life long. don't worry that it's not good enough for anyone else to hear. just sing, sing a song. all right now, were you singing? did you get that little ditty going in your head? if only life were as simple as that little song. i believe it could be. what? you've got to be joking? next thing you know, we'll be reading tina's own version of all i needed to know about life i learned in kindergarten. mock if you must, but the answers to our existence are found within the children inside us all. i love it that Jesus was all about that pure, unjaded, unruffled, uncomplicated approach...a sort of "juvenile relinquishment" of worry, stress, and every degree of maleficent hatchetry. not allowing any kind of uptight, degrading, dishonoring, spirit-breaking, dignity-shattering nonsense to enter the zone of abundance. and how does one accomplish this miracle of lifestyle serenity? think back to the playground, the hopscotch on the sidewalk, the corner lemonade stand, the bike rides, the kick-the-can games, and the effortless state of innocence. in my midlife world-weary hindsight, i can see the moments of love, truth, community, and passion, all laying a foundation which i stand on today that refuses to budge as it's nearly beaten to a pulp by hate, lies, isolation, and apathy. as peculiar as this sounds, there is an old child inside me, pleading for a chance to play, to touch, to hug, to bond, to invent, to discover, to love, and to be loved. and that old child just happens to be a soulmate of the greatest old child of all, an ideal prototype human being, who never really embraced adulthood as we define it today. yet in his "juvenile relinquishment", he somehow managed to become the most highly functioning adult who ever walked the good earth. read about him, talk about him, talk to him, be like him, live for him...and find the reasons why you were put on the planet, and what simple songs you are meant to sing out loud and strong.

peace---i'm trying to give it a chance, how about you? and that is not a statement either way on the big topic du jour, yes or no to war in the iraq situation. instead it is simply a declaration that, amid unprecedented ups and downs on every level of my life and the world's life, it truly is time for me to give peace a chance more than ever before. i'm clicking on peace causes, reading peace poetry, going to peace festivals, thinking peace thoughts. i look back on the statement in my last blog entry about my own peace being like the log that grossly supercedes the speck of global war. that is most definitely how i feel, but i must admit, what good is the achievement of a peaceful state of my personal mind and heart, if the world i live in goes needlessly helter-skelter? guess what, i intend to pour my energies in both directions, my heart and the heart of this world. and if wacko unsubstantive haste takes over (in any direction by any party on any side of the war dialogue), let's face it--our hearts will not go on like that titanic song. there won't be enough string quartets on decks around the world to serenade us with "nearer my God to thee" in the face of the tragedy that will undoubtedly follow. so let's unpack that a moment shall we? the opposite of wacko unsubstantive haste is sane substantive slowness. don't get me wrong, there is an undeniable urgency factor present for me and for my globe full of kindred seeking spirits. but me and my globe o'folk need to chill and regroup a little. we are so in need of guidance and mentorship, as sheep in need of a shepherd. we (me and my globe o'folk) are suffering from lack of the things that matter: truth, love, community, passion. those four factors are like legs of a chair that we desperately need to spiritually sit in. break it down, love/truth/community--no passion--chair falls, love/truth/passion--no community--chair falls, truth/community/passion--no love--chair falls, love/passion/community--no truth--chair falls. so how am i doing in these? check with me in a year, wait a second, check with me in a month--i rally within myself even now to not write myself off so flippantly. however, i recognize that i do need time to gently yet aggressively HEAL (there's that paradox again--you love me for these). sometimes you bandage up or put stuff on wounds or do limb therapy to heal. sometimes you just sit, with wounds uncovered, and let things air heal. that's what i am doing these days--air healing. and it is bringing me peace, which is slowly resourcing my 4 deficient chair legs. so how about you world? love in the world?--jaded, conditional, inconsistent. passion in the world?--misdirected, unfocused, or totally locked up and buried (see the movie "adaptation" for a great and creative, off-the-wall lesson about passion). truth in the world?--hidden so far beneath the surface, we can hardly hear it gasping for breath beneath the ever-rising rubble of countless generations. community in the world?--a key healing ingredient for every entity in life, be it politics, government, cities, country clubs, ghettos, the UN, the noisy neighbor upstairs, and in the piety clubs with the word "church" on their signposts yet have little to no resemblance whatsoever to the true meaning of the word "church"--COMMUNITY is the throbbing pulse beneath the shallowness, the tell-tale heart that persistently beckons for reckoning. gee, i'd like to note that my passion chair leg just had a healing moment. let's pray for more healing moments for all our broken chair legs. this is not idealistic spam, it's vital for our titanically toxic hearts to go on in a state of ever-increasing peace. dona nobis pacem, dona nobis pacem, infinity...

fight, fight, fight, fight, collide, collapse, concede. concede? is that really what i'm supposed to do at a moment of collision and/or collapse? i haven't been floating like a butterfly or stinging like a bee...spending more time bee-ing stung than roping dopes. i throw my hands up and say, this dope is roped. this blackbird has passed out in the cage. today, but not forever. look at that, today but not forever. that actually looks hopeful when i read it, and feels hopeful as i silently chant it as breath. driving down the white-trash aspiration hills and along the ethnic desperation yards, hearing the spam of the radio scan search feature, surrounded by miracles and magnificence if i could click on to them. like the opposite of frodo's ring, where he can click across the cosmic line at crucial moments and touch human evil, this is a far-less-developed instinct that i believe we all have--clicking on to the extraordinary, the amazing, the beauty, the hope...everywhere i look outside me...everywhere i look INside me. yes the fight is being played out on many many levels these days. did you read about the handshake man who dodged protocol and gave our president a note claiming God told him there would be 50,000 casualties if our nation did not repent? agree or disagree, it stuns you when you think about it long enough. fight for peace, fight for war, fight for truth, fight for justice, respect, harmony. fight for my way over your way, fight for surviving, let alone thriving. fight for dreams to be released, fight for nightmares to be ceased. fight for my peace, the log superceding the speck of global thermonuclear warfare. my peace...world peace, what can me and the world do? i say again, click on, dare to twitch our noses like samantha and step into another dimension, an undercurrent, a petrifying purifying plethora of transformation and transcendence. when i manage to do this for one brief moment in time, (brief because after all, this is mega-powerful stuff and even frodo didn't last too long in his inside out glimpses) truth kisses and kills me simultaneously like some spiritual spinal tap. i have big problems translating these surges of mega-power into daily life in this transitory love-craving vessel. i saw "the yoofo club" last night, an independently-produced Iowa film which especially lovable quirky-souled malcontents like me should see. in that film, i saw the fight at its fiercest. i see it all around me, i feel it intensifying everywhere. and i have compassion for the battles of others and of this world. i do wish i had more compassion for the battles within my own quirky soul, which are the fiercest and most intense battles of all. say what you will about quirky-soul-to-the-max michael jackson, but one of his songs says it extremely well, "i'm starting with the man in the mirror, i'm asking him to change his ways, and no message could have been any clearer, if you wanna make the world a better place, take a look at yourself and make that change." God, change me today. kiss me and kill me at the same time. petrify and purify me with love and truth. supercede my visions of glory with provisions of reality, which contains its own brand of glory when it's embraced. be the God of peace in my heart and in this world's heart, more than ever before. peace, peace, peace, peace, dance, heal, transcend. peace is possible, and i seize it gratefully, humbly fighting out the footsteps toward it.

hello to the blogger world--blessings to you all. in the midst of this heartland post-blizzard day, i relate to it, the post-blizzard state. lots of slush, proceeding cautiously, skidding, slowly creeping where you can usually whizz on by, transitional spots especially treacherous, lots of slush, chill to the bone, scraping and kicking and digging out from being covered up and marooned, seeing and feeling your breath more than usual, temperaments warped by the temperature, and did i mention lots and lots of slush. but beyond the immediate, what else do i learn from it? much needed moisture gained, much greater appreciation of sunshine and warmth, much more inner strength after exercising those muscles of character. that's pretty annoying, but true nonetheless. and at least, it just doesn't last that long, and it's never really as bad as it seems in the moment. so what does one do in a time of "melting?" fall back on the knowledge that it's not meant to cripple you. keep moving--inside and out, but be still--inside and out. yoo-hoo, that's a mighty trippy trick, isn't it? yes...BUT NO! you're loving me, right now, aren't you. paradox and swirl are the new absolutes. not really new, but we've arrived at an age where it is imperative to embrace them on all levels--global, national, corporate, relational, emotional, personal, spiritual. what does all this mean...come on now, read your scripts...nothing and everything! here's my wish for you today: in your blizzards, may you melt/in your sunshine, may you chill/if you do not get this now/some sweet day i hope you will.

from the MANIFEST MYSTERY 37 poetic anthology aka non-linear autobiography:

homage to emily d...because i could not stop for life/it kindly stopped for me/grand design of universe's/warped generosity/whilst on and on i ventured forth/fault destined to repeat/bitter interruption reveal'd/the detriment of sweet...no rant and rave today folks - just a little verse to make you think/feel - shake yourself up with these words and see what floats to the top - have fun my friends

oh world, what do i want you to know this chilly day? that you're small, that each of us is small, that each of our lives and concerns is small, and to know that deeply is to have a much more accurate, peaceful, effective perspective on things. is everyone as consumed with themselves as i am? self-absorbed full of me-me-me-me in the midst of this beautiful chaordic world. chaordic equals chaos plus order in case you were wondering. i think everyone should have a globe in their house. somebody please send me a globe of my very own! it's a wonderful reminder of how small we all are, and it gives incredible perspective. like one of my favorite spiritual movies, the truman show, where he finally discovers the truth of the cocoon he's living in, and there's a whole big fat greek and non-greek world outside it. why is this "smallness" a good thing for the world to know? because our lives were never meant to revolve around any one of us, or be so limited in their scope, so non-abundant in their scale. most of us dare to taste about a sliver of what the life experience was meant to offer. why? because once we construct our little demi-god castles and courtyards, our energy for outsiders conveniently runs out. wake up, self! wake up o diva, out of thy slumber, and the truth will set you free! truth which includes open arms, open mind, open heart, open spirit, open to expansion and explosion and examination and ultimately...exhilaration. yes my weird little world is a small one, and i must find ways to connect to the bigger picture, the true truth. otherwise i have nothing left in my days to look forward to except a doomed destiny of sliverhood. i have big big things going on in life, and yes they seem consuming and impossible. but let's vow now to think bigger, higher, wider, wiser. let's not be so full of ourselves that we only taste a sliver. my little wacko world desperately needs injections of the real uncocooned, blockbuster, exhilarating world. even in a maybe war state? especially then. even in a i'd rather commit suicide state? yes yes yes. even in a hopeless black failure mood? you better believe it. i am counting on it. my world is way too self-focused. i am not supergirl, i am not the messiah. i am a misfit who dares to aspire higher...and lower.

what's up y'all? your spirit? your blood pressure? your attitude? your weight? i am up like the Lord is up and i feel my life on the rise. gold star for you if you know from what source i just quoted. choose from these options: 1) you have everything--you are UP; 2) you have nothing--you are UP; 3) you have a combo plate--you are UP, 4) you have everything--you are DOWN; 5) you have nothing--you are DOWN; 6) you have a combo plate--you are DOWN; 7) you have everything--you are a combo plate; 8) you have nothing--you are a combo plate; 9) you have a combo plate--you are a combo plate. all of that was to make you think and reveal this oh-so-profound profundity about myself...i am number nine, my life is number nine, and if most of us were honest, we would admit to the number nine syndrome. as of this moment, the "have" and "are" pendulums have swung wildly to the downside, the place where stuff like this comes to your head---the sista in humble circumstances should take pride in her high position--that's a tina-paraphrase Scripture in James by the way. but in this winter of my discontent, it's a learning time, discovering what my faith in Christ is really all about, and what really really constitutes thriving in joy. "thriving" and "joy" are two words that get tossed around carelessly way too often. so far, as i put my life in the garage and bid the breeze adieu, here's what i'm slowly learning: UP is overrated, DOWN is underrated, the words "everything" and "nothing" have lost their power and meaning and have become warped and defined by shallow societal godlessness, and the true joy...drum roll please...the true joy of life comes from THE COMBO PLATE. Yes, folks, that's life, and more importantly, that's life in Christ, paradox and swirl. i'm grateful that to this party, God invites the tina girl...and all of us who are willing to re-investigate, re-invigorate, re-negotiate, and re-navigate our life together in Christ. i used the singular on purpose. because together we are one great big combo plate, in need of the same truth, the same joy, the same Savior. A mantra is mine at present is "grief is good". lots of loss needs lots of grief to heal us and prevent the total death of joy. guess what, my faith is changing AND staying the same, and the more i see myself and others and situations and this whole wide wacky weird wild world as the combo plates we all are...simply put, i THRIVE in JOY! happy number nine syndrome to us all, and i wish you a combo plate life that is truly thriving in joy.