I’ve staked my tent at the burning bush and the dark night of my tradition. I dwell in a Vast center, wary to get any closer.
I dance a tight wire between the stakes of religious anxiety and a calm so deep it can’t be of my own doing but some kind of inheritance.
An angel sits on my soul who can make it difficult to move. I must be taught the way of no escape.

Things are happening
Hell breaks loose,
guns get centerstage
Empathy is weaponized
Youth and Teachers scream STOP!
Opioids and cell phones run the world.
Walls or bridges? Walls or bridges?

At the same time
A Civil Rights icon shows up to play.
A Doctor on retreat cries for her own body.
Congregationalists break out in Dance.
It is the decade of Embodiment.

“The old will dream new dreams
The young shall see a mighty vision
In the day that Love has made
We will end our hateful division
Oh Joy shall come to the city streets
Our hearts with life together beat
The rich ones, poor ones shall bow down
to the children who shall lead us.
O People come and sing your song
Sing your song together
Joy shall come to this strange land
when we love each other.”

Is love enough? Justice is what love looks like in public says Cornel West
I journey in the culvert of powerlessness.
The water is only knee deep.
But, this dance is completely underground, invisible. 
No one can take this work away from me. I must do it.
There will be no more details to share for some time.

When horror and terror live one room away
It’s Hell for a body at home.
And for many bodies everywhere.
And yet bodies are rising, starving,
twitching to move everywhere I look.

Bodies are marching,
up in arms,
rocking loose from grey matter,
taking sides, singing too loud,
bursting forth with evolutionary fervor.
The body wants to move, to befriend, to heal!

I know the brain science for this.
I know the testaments and techniques.
This has nothing to do with that.
Knowing is just a way to map a territory.
What we have here is the earth working herself up.
Nature is paying us forward with birthright force.
Black lives, women lives, children’s lives, elders lives,
indigenous lives, gay lives, animal’s lives,
the living land and water.
It’s an earthquake of spirit.
A volcano.

The body will have its event
and we will have to choose.
This is where art comes back in.
Free will wants to grow,
but not without free, loving and beautiful people.
This is whyI’ II dance in the culvert of despair
just as I dance in the streets.
I pray in the studio, the office, and the recovery zone.
I am a first and a last responder,
I am a mother octopus suspended with her eggs
preparing to die.