I just returned from Voices of Our Nation Arts Foundation (VONA) on a red eye from California this morning.  From the brisk, sweet breeze of Berkeley, I step into a thick water soaked towel of humidity called Ohio with its oppressive heat index and barely livable summer conditions.

I’m trying to hold onto the transformative week I just had; learning about the craft and artistry of writing and my reflections on my week submerged in an entirely different culture.

But I can’t writer when my eyes won’t open, when my brain is still on a jam packed airplane refusing to move on the runway.  My body is still back there somewhere.  And I need rest, deeply.

So, my advice to you today is this: go into the wilderness of your life.  Take a turn that you would never plan and be open to whatever the Universe is directing.  Listen.

Changing your life may be one decision away.  And it may be the best thing you ever did for yourself.

I’ve been keeping quiet for a while.

This blog has been quiet, neglected really, for quite some time.  I changed the masthead to remind myself where I currently am, but something about it doesn’t feel right.  I’m not “liberal” — I never really took to labels — but I did it to give readers some direction, a heads up as to what they’re delving into when they arrive at this site.

I’m not sure where this blog is headed.  Part of me feels like it needs to retire, but I’m not really sure I can retire it.  There’s a tendency in the western world to put a beginning and end on so many things when, in fact, it’s one big beginning and one big end with a lot of dashes in between. My Ecdysis is like that.  There are periods of sharing and uploading, and then there are periods of inactivity.  At least public inactivity.

This morning I went to the funeral of Chris Roark, a heart-centered, truth seeking English professor from John Carroll University in Cleveland.  My time working at St. Dominic afforded me the privilege to know and work with Chris in a number of projects.  His name regularly rolled off my tongue when I spoke of some of the best folks around that I know in the area who bring the arts, literary scene, and talent to a whole new level on a local stage.  Last week, he suffered a major heart attack and immediately died.  He was 51 years old.

His love story was one of classic texts and he had three young children he adored.  Chris was one of those people who I relied upon in an inexplicable way.  I relied upon him like a barometer, to reassure myself that life at any age is worth living, good books, good love, good food, and good conversation is what leads you to what matters.  Attending his funeral felt like a thief had come into our home and taken something of great worth.  I wept.  I grieved.  I couldn’t hold it together as I looked at the casket with a white cloth so delicately covering a harsh, inhumanly even shape.  So much life lived, and so much yet to live.  All finished.  All sealed in a box.

When I grieve, crying is the secondary physical reaction.  The first thing is the lungs.  They compress, as if the tragedy hangs like humidity in my chest, making it difficult to operate and send oxygen to the places where it needs to go.  Looking at the church, I observe nearly every adult – male and female – weeping and wonder, “why are we crying?”  Why, in the midst of supposed belief that Chris is in a place where there is no more pain, suffering, or limits, why do we grieve?  Of course we grieve because we no longer have the physical.  What makes relationships so beautiful is the physical – the looks, the sighs, the touches, the exchange and engagement of the physical.  Our ideas are spoken, our reactions are visible, our bodies constantly express themselves.  And that physicality is stolen by death.  Sitting in that church, I felt it.  The thief.  The thief who steals good people from this world came again.  Even as Fr. Tom shares that, “God has called Chris home,” I didn’t know how or why going home for one has to leave so many in pain.

My answer of why we grieve was printed on the back of the funeral program.  Along with an equally beautiful and painful photo of Chris’ family on the back page was a quote, “He was a glance from God.” (Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God) and it hit me, as I stared at the perfect photo of him with his beaming wife and joyful children as to why we grieve.

Two reasons.

The first is we always grieve what is seemingly broken.  We associate brokenness with disjointed pain, malfunction, an interruption of what is and what we think should be.  We grieve brokenness, but especially when it is the brokenness that cannot be fixed, which reminds us of our endless run-ins with incompleteness, disappointment, failure, and inaptitude.  Brokenness, from every angle, looks unnatural.  A broken toy, a broken family, a broken bone — what should be joined is split and its function loses purpose.  No one likes feeling futile, and we grieve the reminder that the things that most challenge us often posit us in positions of helplessness.  Doesn’t bode well for western society especially.  We go out of our way to heal what needs healing, to provide glue in any situation to keep it together.  Extreme measures are taken to ensure the longevity of animals, possessions, and human life.  Even in the cavity of our moral uncertainty, we often proceed forward determined to elongate and preserve what once was at any cost.  Because the alternative is not an option.  No one likes broken, or even the potential for brokenness.  Because if we allow brokenness in, we might have to rely on others to get us through, we may have to form stronger communities, we may have to be there for others at inconvenient times, we may even have to acknowledge that we don’t know what’s in store for us and live each day in that hopefulness/anxiety.

The second reason why we grieve is selfish. We lose an open channel that connected us to something greater. Any time a person makes you feel more alive, it’s a gift.  And the removal of that person feels like an estrangement from God.  We grieve what is no longer with us that once brought us deeper joys, greater laughs, bigger smiles.  In the grand tradition of human greed, we want more of what’s good, of who’s good, and what they represent.  Who wouldn’t want more Chris Roarks in the world?  But there was only one, and that one is now gone.  To where, I don’t know.  We grieve that personal loss because we know there isn’t enough of it in the world. There isn’t enough God or good in the world – however you want to define it – and when you agree to sit through a funeral with nothing but songs, tears, and kind words to anchor you to the bottom of your oceanic grief, there is no way to avoid that concrete fact: another vehicle of love has transitioned and before you can make adjustments to accept the new way you relate to the deceased, you have to confront the fact that the way you gave and received love from that person is no longer available.

In so many tragedies, the word “senseless” is used to articulate the process that someone died with no foreseeable warning, without serving a purpose.  Maybe though, there is nothing senseless about death at all, it’s actually the one thing that does make sense, we just don’t want to admit it.  It makes sense that we die.  Our bodies age, our organs malfunction, our lives are uncertain.  When an end comes, there isn’t a “sense” to make of it, just like there’s no logic to explain how or why we end up loving people so damn much.  Nothing about love is logical.  We could never reason out why we love, we just do.  It’s the same for death.  We weren’t all born at the same time, so we’re surely not going to leave all at once.  And that unknown fact of when we will die, or whose death we must survive and endure, makes us vulnerable in the most profound way.

As I looked at the pain during the funeral, I wondered time and time again what each person was grieving for.  I grieved for his wife, who I feel a special bond of relationship with, and his children who are so young to lose a parent.  I grieved because to be truly alive means to be open, and to be open means to volunteer to suffer through physical separation when our loved ones transition to another place.

After thinking about Chris, my mind raced with unfinished thoughts, unwritten endings to poems, stories, and prompts.  I am quiet no more.  Living, the kind of living I want to do, requires interaction and voice.  Chris lived only 51 years, but he lived so well, so fully.  When I evaluated my own life, I had no excuses to wait or dampen my life in fear or worry.  There are no excuses for any of us to not live as fully as he did.

However fragmented this piece, this blog, this life will be, it is solely mine.  I own it.  And mine will not be quiet.

Remembering you, Chris, and all that your life gave in seeds to feed so many around you. I will not forget you.

This is how I feel about my life right now. A piece of artwork in process, perhaps forever in transition. Dramatic, illogical, sloppy even. But real.

After two years of inexplicable sacrifice and flexibility, Nick is graduating from his MBA program on Sunday. This day was dreamed about 3 years ago, and it has come at a price that I cannot express in words. The stress, the unknown, the uncertainty that it came with took its toll on our life, marriage, mental health, physical health, and confidence. Ironically, going through such times makes one even more confident, assured, and even. The degree itself is not what has given Nick or me pride, it’s the knowledge that we endured such a difficult terrain together, and if we are able to do that, we are able to contort out lives into whatever pretzel shape we need to get through to the next phase of life.

For me, that includes getting accepted into VONA – a dream of mine for the past five years or so – and beyond that, who knows?

If there’s one thing Nick and I have learned to love, it is living in the moment and not worrying so much about tomorrow. We know and rest in the peace that today our dreams are finally come true, and we have come out holding hands with full hearts.

I toast to my partner, Nick, for this trek, and to Isaiah, who has given us so much joy and hope. Most of all, I toast to us as a family for getting each other through.

Time to celebrate life, time to take the masterpiece view.

life flows in seasons, doesn’t it?

to think otherwise is setting ourselves up for frustration. life is never still. even if our memory conjures up a time that we remember as more steady, i’m quite certain that if we did go back to that time – or any time, really – we would find life was indeed moving, changing, dancing a foreign beat we didn’t recognize.

daily life, inch my inch gains or loses something. whether we acknowledge it is something else entirely, but the fact remains: steadiness is not our nature.

toddler’s limbs are always tugging longer. we metabolize new experiences that affect our perspective. people come and go. the axis our world leans upon ensures that we continue to evolve.

to think otherwise is foolish.

and yet, why do we grasp for certainty and predictability? why do we strive and strain to see the road ahead when all we can really handle is one step at at time?
* * * * *

In halting words and emotions threatening to spill out of my eyelids, I said the words I needed to say: I decided to focus my time on two things right now. Isaiah and writing. Balancing anything more tears everything and everyone else a part, including me.

I resigned from my position at the church.

After two years of building and teaching, leading and learning, I decided to step away.
* * * * *

some people say you can’t see beyond the bend of the road
that’s fortunate, i think
because if i could anticipate every bend in the road of life, i’m not sure i’d make it around each time

my father, his voice belling out with all the authority life gave him in 70 years, often says, “life is like that, liz. life is like that. you have to keep adapting. keep changing. keep going. life is like that.” when he tells me these things, i often picture him as a young man, crossing oceans to get to the united states from the philippines. images of him as a boy in black and white pictures hang on a string behind him when he tells me that life is like that. i wonder what life told my dad for my dad to advise me to change with the times. to keep going. to persevere. i wonder what how many bends in the road my father lived through. because when he says, “life is like that liz” he doesn’t really look at me. his eyes cloud over with memory. he is transported to a time, I think, before i even existed.
* * * * *

When it’s time to tell the staff, my heart is beating so loudly, I feel I have to talk extra loud so they hear me. But my voice won’t come out of my throat. My hands are shaking and I see their faces. The women and men who have supported me, uplifted my work, uplifted ME as a minister of justice and challenging traditions in every corner I thought worth fighting. I got some words out, my drafted speech escaped me and my tongue felt swollen.

I contemplated saying I had to use the bathroom and excuse myself so I could get control of my feelings.

I didn’t. I offered 3 plain sentences and when they came out, they were as steady as Isaiah’s first steps in our living room. Uncertain, wobbly, but a sign of growth.

“I decided to take time to focus on my writing and being with Isaiah once Nick starts his new job.”

It’s out. Writing. My agenda is out. Out in the world. It’s no longer hidden in my writing room, patched on my collages and french cork boards, hung in image and only in dream. it was out and open to be scrutinized.

My hands continued to shake. I wasn’t sure what caused the tremors: the impending transition from a job I truly loved or knowing people will want to know what I’m working on. the sanctity of writing graduated to an open commitment that I publicly expressed.
* * * * *
nick is convincing me I did the right thing.

“no matter what, you’ll always have an excuse not to write. there’s always something going on with work or isaiah, and it’s the perfect excuse not to write. you know?”

i am sitting on the couch and ridden with sadness. i don’t reply to nick’s effort to make me feel better.

i finally look up and ask, “why do you think this is the right thing?” i knew it was the right thing, but i couldn’t bring myself to say it. i wanted to hear him say it, the only person who knew what was haunting me from the inside.

he shrugged at the alternative that came up in his head, “if you don’t, i know you, you’ll regret it. you’ll regret it if you don’t prioritize writing.”
* * * * *

I sift through emails from people who hear that I resigned. All of them supportive but swathed in sadness. One in particular strikes me.
“I won’t grieve this because now I’ll have you on the page and, there, I’ll have you to cherish.”

* * * * *
I take a breath, close my eyes.
And leap.

I just got back from El Salvador. My body is fatigued, my mind is foggy, and my heart seems to be in a coma from all that it was exposed to.

I am tired.

The only sadness I feel comes from my regret that I didn’t have time to write. Each morning was early – a 6am rousal – and each night my mind was saturated with image and heat, too tired to process anything. I jotted down fragmented and unfinished notes and questions, torn pieces of leaf from being in the fields. But already my return to the United States brings forth a tidal wave beyond my control and I feel helpless swept up in it again. The fast pace. The next thing. Phone calls. Emails. Projects. Unreturned messages. Appointments. Questions. Demands.

All these things, pebble by pebble, put dents in my now softer soul. And that makes me sad. Trying to hold onto the peace of the mountainside of El Salvador is like trying to stand still on a roller coaster.
A seemingly impossible task.

Even the news – my favorite sites and bloggers – are different. I read what they have to say about the world and it’s so sharply negative, so divisive. Even when I’m agreeing with the overall point, the accusatory, whistle-blowing journalism reads jarring, almost spiteful.

Even as I write this, my neighbor’s lawn maintenance workers are using machinery that echoes down the street. No stillness. No peace. Not even on a Tuesday afternoon.

This was my 8th or 9th trip to Latin America in my life and it was the most comfortable I’ve ever felt. I don’t know if it was my familiarity or just not having time to be afraid that was the biggest factor, but bI realized that living unfraid is truly the only way to move forward. It helped me begin conversations and give greetings to people that I didn’t know without wondering if they would judge my horrible spanish speaking skills. Perhaps I just trusted the people more to see my sincerity and not the language barrier that helped me speak more freely, live more loosely with the people there. Whatever the reason, my heart beat softly there and my ears felt more open.

I felt alive.

And I returned here, I immediately noticed the differences again between US culture and Latin America. A TSA worker in Newark snapped at my friend for going the wrong way. No one talked to each other in line waiting to get through immigration, and everyone seemed absorbed in their cell phones. These observations deepened my introspection. And sadness.

I thought about what it means to be poor and how many of my travel mates cannot comprehend such a life of material absence. On previous trip to economically deprived countries, I usually kept quiet because my opinion differed. Of course the injustice of poverty outraged me as it always did, but the simplicity of life uplifted me. Life is not measured by the size or cleanliness of our homes, but what our minds and hearts are filled with. Poverty of healthcare, education, food, clean water, and basic housing are atrocities against the spirit, but inside that devastation reaps a rich spirituality of simplicity and unassuming existences that I find attractive. Without romanticizing the poor, they have the capability to give thanks freely and openly for what they are given without second thought. The deprivation of luxury and convenience, to us US travelers, is unbearable, but to them the coming and going of death and suffering is a part of life and somehow, in the complex equation of understanding cultural differences, I find their relationships come with more ease, more community, and more understanding than I’ve seen in my own country or city here in United States. We’re hardly “united” at all.

I’m not advocating that the poor remain in their state of suffering. I’m not advocating that we relinquish all the possessions and assets that we have to try and find a deeper sense of self and community, but there is an undeniable truth to the poor that goes unnoticed. In the blinding state of unjust severe poverty, North Americans seem hasty and eager to feel better about the situation. There’s no place to put that kind of suffering in our mental shelves. Many of us have no reference for such inequality and helplessness. Most of the people I have traveled with leave feeling “bad” and throw more toward charity and education non-profits. Acts of charity has its place and is needed.

But acts of charity are not transformative.

Neither is feeling bad.

The world – from El Salvador to the Philippines to Shaker Heights, Ohio – is full of injustice. So much so that it would be easy to abandon any thought of helping because the cause is so overwhelming. The governments are corrupt, the illusion of self-preservation is strong, and the pedagogy of scarcity pervades first world countries. The question “What am I to do?” becomes the question. Erroneously so. That question gets you nowhere.

If you’re like me, an ordinary person with heaps of privilege and many responsibilities, “to do” becomes another issue to tackle. Like another item on a “to do” list. If you examine the option of “doing” you’ll find that it truly does not get you anywhere, and only further feeds one of two things: 1) self-relief to avoid accountability or 2) self-guilt for not being able to save the world

Rather than asking “What am I to do?” the question becomes “Who am I to be?” Who you become, in response to what we have seen with our eyes, is the ultimate question of accountability. Regardless of religious or non-religious belief, education, status, ability, or citizenship, we are all accountable. Even to those we do not know by face.

If we claim to lead lives of love, how can love be reserved only for those we know? Aren’t we capable to love those we do not?

Loving those we do not know is done by who we are, who we grow to “BE” not by what we “DO.”

“I am” is the answer to the question how to go about living in this world, how to adjust our lenses to look at life, at one another. We cultivate our BEING so our actions automatically follow suit.

Be. And then, naturally, you will do.

It was five years ago during Easter weekend when my husband Nick and I got off a plane from Boston to visit my family here in Ohio for the holiday. It was my favorite time of year but what I was most looking forward to was spending time with my siblings. I was close with all of them, and since our move to the east coast, I was eager to catch up with everyone.

In the time that I had been gone, my family had changed significantly. One of my brothers moved to Los Angeles, my other brother began having children. His oldest son Zach was 2 that Easter and there was another baby was on the way. Although I was a loving and enthusiastic aunt, I really hadn’t had the time to adapt to the changes that had occurred in my family.

After just a few hours, it was clear that the family dynamic had changed. Everything we talked about was about babies and pregnancy. From what they ate to when they slept, it seemed the topics were endless. I had been looking forward to hearing what was going on with everyone – my sister’s new job, my parents move to Virginia – and sharing details of the new life that was unfolding for me and Nick in Boston, but no one seemed interested in that conversation. My patience was wearing thin. We were about to say grace before the Easter meal, and we began making the sign of the cross as we always did. I began saying “in the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit when I stopped and realized that everyone else was going at a much slower pace. Everyone else had slowed their words and exaggerated every movement so two year old Zach could follow along.

My anger and annoyance got the better of me, and my voice dripped with sarcasm as I asked, “Can we please pray like normal people?”

The room was suddenly quiet and I’ll never forget the look of anger and hurt on my brother’s face after I said that.

I said those words before I had a child of my own, before I really knew anything about parenting. I said those words in pure reaction to what I saw before me: the changed family dynamic and everyone behaving differently.

I thought a lot about that incident as I movde into Holy Week this year. I wonder how many times have I lived my life of faith purely by what my eyes have seen, rather than what my heart believes to be true? It makes me look at the people in Jesus’ life who lived by their eyes.

What did Peter see? He saw Jesus in chains. Jesus was mocked, tortured, and condemned. Peter’s eyes read the situation and reacts: he denies even knowing who the man was. What about Pilate? What did he see? He saw a crowd before him, shouting threats and he reacts: he gives into their demand for Jesus to be crucified. We have all these instances of people in Jesus’ life who make decisions by what their eyes take in.

And then there’s Jesus, the one person who doesn’t live that way. Jesus never lived his life purely by what he saw. Imagine what he would have done, imagine what his life might have been like, had he relied only on what his eyes saw: cruelty, hypocrisy abandonment, betrayal, illness, idolatry.

Jesus knew there was more than just what his eyes can tell him.

Jesus lived and died in a faith beyond what his eyes could see. And he asks us, he instructs us to live as he did: in love, in service, in gratitude.

And that is the invitation of Good Friday.

Good Friday is not about death. It is the time we stop living by only what our eyes can see and allow our hearts to take us where Jesus is calling us to be.

When you step out of this church and into the street, when you lose your job, when a parent gets sick, when your marriage is beginning to fray, when addiction or cancer touches your family, what do your eyes tell you to do? Our eyes will often tell us to run. To deny. To be afraid. To give in. To hold onto the anger. Our eyes tell us to save ourselves. To safeguard our family, our possessions, our own pride.
Every step of Jesus journey’ gave him more evidence to do those same things but he didn’t. He responded differently. He knew that in the face of darkness, our eyes advise us to shrink back, despite the quiet whisper of God in our heart telling us to stand up. Good Friday. This is the day we do not shrink back. Good Friday. This is the day we move forward like Jesus. This is when we move beyond the eyes of own individualistic life and share it with and for others. We do this because we know that if we live only by our eyes, we may miss the resurrection.

Because it wasn’t until my own son turned two years old, and I saw him fumbling through making the sign of the cross and I, without thinking, began saying it out loud very slowly and I began making exaggerated motions with my hands, when I heard the cock crow in my life and I suddenly remembered what I had said five years ago at easter.

It was that moment my heart was broken open by God, so open that I could finally offer my brother an apology so many years later. And it was then I realized that we must allow our hearts to be broken open by God, so they can be open to one another.

Are you trying to live your life by what your eyes see before you? Or do you live out your life by what your heart believes?

I was recently engaging in an online disagreement turned ugly about my identification as a catholic. In all fairness, it was my fault. I commented when I should have known better.

A newspage I had liked on Facebook for its incisive perspective on current events posted a link to an article that reported on priest whose homophobic and absurd remarks to a senior class prompted outrage, emotion, and tears. The link was sent out with a remark, basically saying if you identify as catholic, you’re “complicit” in all the wrongdoings of the church.

What ensued was inevitable, and I knew this. Anytime I willfully enter a shitstorm with someone who basically hates the Catholic Church, I can’t really complain about getting poop on all over me.
What I took issue with was not the history of the Catholic Church. It seems any time I enter a debate about the Catholic Church, people feel the need to list all of the historical evils, as if I am not aware or do not have daily run-ins, struggles, and doubts about those very things myself. (Sexism, homophobia, gender essentialism, its past stance on war, interracial marriage, slavery…the list goes on…)

No, what I took issue with is the concept that anyone who identifies as Catholic is, as one commenter labeled me, an accessory to child pedophilia and a scandalous cover-up. Nothing short of leaving the church and ceasing all financial contributions would appease this writer who disagreed with me.

Perhaps that’s one way to show dissent, but organizing across temples and synagogues, churches, and faiths to garner collective strength to create change, to call for greater transparency, to demand funding for local public schools, to meet with religious leaders – that is not dissent?

Apparently not.

It soon dawned on me what my upset emotions were all about. Somewhere inside me, this “discussion” touched on a very raw nerve that few people have danced upon. It’s the loose canon inside me that goes off when people expect me to apologize for being Catholic. It’s the rage people tap into when “dissent” is measured by abandoning, by retreating, and thwarting funds to claim you are doing it for the children, the gays, the women, the mistreated, the marginalized.

That would be fine and good to live in a world where I believed that that would create some force of change.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t think attending or belonging to the Catholic Church is for everyone, but when it is asserted that the Catholics who are doing healing, ministering, transformative work within the church are hypocrites unless dissent is done in one specific way, how is that prerequisite any different from the straight, narrow, and suffocating definition of power the Church itself often exercises?

Working for change within the walls or outside the walls of the church is slow, and yes, women, men, and children are being beaten and raped, by predators disguised as priests everyday. But tell me, instruct me, show me how justice comes if not from the inside? Tell me how a mother births a child from outside her body.

My faith is a personal choice because faith is a personal experience for me. It can’t be summed up in words, let alone a comment box on the internet. I am not naïve in thinking it does not come with public judgment, preconception, mockery, and activist litmus tests, but I suppose I had assumed that my personhood and my work would be respected even if my label as a Catholic is trashed. Maybe I should revisit that assumption.

Sometimes I wish I could live as the writer outlined. How wonderfully binary the world could be if I could just – with the snap of my wallet and my decision to abandon all the values of my cultural heritage instilled through Catholicism – claim dissent by disappearing from the pew. But that is not how change occurs.
The experience of the church of as feminist of color is a painful existence on a daily basis, but it’s an experience that I choose –YES, I CHOOSE – each day. Perhaps someday I will choose differently, but from what I can see of the world, from my perspective of institutional abuse, scandal, and oppression, removal of oneself is a terminal one-step plan. Nothing happens after you cut off your ties. You leave. No one follows you screaming, “COME BACK!” You leave of your own volition and silence follows your exit. Someone asked me what good comes of my working and resisting within the church? Well, a helluva lot more good than if I left.

How effective is my letter written to Xavier University which just announced its ceasing birth control coverage for its employees if I just write my name at the end instead of identifying as frustrated and pissed off alum who wants and expects more dialogue? How much change can I truly be a part of if I attend a theology course and raise my hand to yell at the professor when instead I can be the educator and raise my own questions of the subject matter?

Dissent is not absence of presence, but a critical and evaluated execution of power and privilege to uplift the marginalized and silenced in the tedious birthing of transformative practice.

All of the history, all of the relationships built between the suffering and the celebration warrants and calls for change, which is why I stay, why I choose to stay Catholic. It is infinitely harder to stay and every single day I want to leave. Every. single. day. But I stay. Not out of guilt, not out of a mommy-daddy-will-be-mad complex. I stay because I know of no political or religious institution without human error. Catholicism, to me, is a microcosm of life. To me, there is no liberation in cutting myself off from what I know needs change. If I left every relationship or organization that caused me sleepless nights or caused harm to those who I love and am accountable to, I would have no citizenship, family, education, religion, or belief to speak of. I don’t choose to stay because I need the identity of a formal institution. I choose to stay because I am scared shitless if I think about what could happen if everyone that gave a damn packed their bags and left the church. I choose to be Catholic because I believe in the symbolism of fire, water, hands, and spirit. I choose Catholicism because I know women and transwomen are worthy, loving, and capable religious leaders. I choose to be catholic because I know most people disagree with me and if I join the cool crowd of absenteeism in the name of activism, I’d be betraying what I know to be true inside my activist heart: most things worth fighting for are gonna outlast you, but that doesn’t mean you should
abandon the cause.

I choose to be and stay catholic because at the heart, Jesus was this badass radical who didn’t leave the effed up situations he found himself in. He went right to the source and raised question, raised a whip in anger, healed the sick, forgave the unforgiveable, and loved children.

I believe that.

And I believe that is worth being badmouthed and ridiculed.

So, I’ve fallen in love with Favianna Rodriguez’s, “Indestructible Women” poster. So much so that when I saw it, I immediately bought not only one but two copies. I have no idea why. There was something about it that spoke to me, something about the three figures of a woman at different stages in her life. The colors of the poster resemble the colors I often dream about, and, overall, the poster made me feel alive.

Indestructible.

This is what Favianna writes about this piece:
This piece was originally developed in 2005 for the Women’s Building in San Francisco, to celebrate International Women’s Day.
The piece represents three powerful women in different stages of their live. The woman on the far left has not learned how to trust herself. She does not turn to herself for guidance. I depicted her looking away from her hands, as our hands are a place where we gain clarity. The woman in the middle is a dancer. She is balancing two dualities of her life. On one hand, she has the fire, the intensity of her life. On the other side, she has the peaceful, represented by a circle. The dancer in the center of the piece balancing the two energies. And finally, on the far right you have the wise woman. The woman who trusts her mind and her spirit and who looks to herself for direction. She is represented in this piece as looking into her hands. Her hands emit energy and light.
Viva La Mujer!

Truthfully, there are days where I feel indestructible and days where I feel vulnerable. I believe the two go hand in hand. When I look at this piece of art, I somehow feel both and holding those two seemingly conflicting emotions make me feel even more strong. The image straightens my spine, lifts my chin, raises my eyes upward. And I’m free.

To celebrate March – women’s herstory month, the beginning of spring – I’m giving away the extra copy of this gorgeous indestructible poster to the person who writes the most confounding, awesome, profound, hilarious, inspiring, truthful, harrowing, heartfelt answer to this question:

What makes you indestructible yet vulnerable?

Here are the rules:

330 word count (I just turned 33 last month)

Deadline Saturday, March 31

Send to me at: factora.borchers@gmail.com

Please include your name, email, and where you want the poster sent to

Winner announced on April 5th

Winner gets “18 x “12 poster and answer will be posted here on my blog

Since I’m paying for postage, I regret that this little shindig is limited to the US and Canada mailing addresses only, but, hey, if you live outside the US or Canada and you want to tell me why your indestructible yet vulnerable anyway, I’ll be pumped to read your answer and potentially share on this blog.

I also regret that I’m mono-tongued and can only read English. Lo siento.

This is open to all, so forward to anyone who celebrates indestructibility and vulnerability.