I will refuse to call it heaven if the people I love (who put me through hell) aren't there. - Andrea Gibson

Do we really believe our need for Prozac
has nothing t do with Fallujah,
with Kabul, with the Mexican border,
with the thousands of U.S. school kids
bleeding budget cuts that will never heal
to fuel war tanks?

That I commit to a life of opening and learning, that I commit to learning at a speed that is vigilant and awake, that I commit to knowing where my empathies lean and why they lean there, that I become increasingly familiar with the why of what raises my voice, that I become increasingly familiar with the why of what lulls me to silence, that I be haunted by the ghosts of who my silences have harmed, that I acknowledge that haunting is love, that I trust love lives in whatever points at the dark, that I acknowledge that shame would likely be my laziest gesture, that I stop denying I am a whole person, and my wholeness is often unlovable, and my wholeness is often lovable, that I own the possibility that there isn't a thing one could say about the person I am that I could wholeheartedly deny; All of it-yes, all of the ugly - yes, all of the beauty-, yes, I have failed and will continue to fail,

I have loved and will continue to love, I am committed to leaning and opening, I want people around me who are committed to learning and opening, people who are failing and loving, people who are stalking their own vigilance, the speed of their own compassion saying, 'FASTER FASTER FASTER.

I met a woman and we were lying in her bed, about to kiss for the very first time. Just before our lips touched she jumped up and ran to her closet and grabbed a stethoscope. She came back to the bed, put the earpieces in my ears, slipped the disc down her shirt onto her heart, and whispered, 'I want you to listen to my heart speed up when you kiss me.' And I kissed her, and I listened to her heart beat faster and faster and faster.