Sisters - By The Scars of My Tongue

You're so very loyal,
By the scars of my tongue,
With all my voices carefully managed,
In the silence of my mind,
Never making it past my teeth,
Those simple and reckless thoughts,
Benign and explosive feelings -
My heart and soul -
justlikeyours
Obscured from you -
For you.

I lassoed these tornadoes in my mind,
For you,
And you've never felt the breeze.
I think about my thoughts,
And you just speak yours;
I'm so fluent in our difference,
You think we're the same,

Because you need us to be the same,
You can't be you,
If I am not also you,
And letting you think so,
Was the best love I ever had,
For so long,
For too long,
I've done you wrong.

And you'll sip, just right, your just right coffee,
And I'll have what you're having, again
And we're both smiling,
For different reasons,
In our paper sisterhood,
Oblivious to the silence
You enjoy. Demand. REQUIRE.

So, my confession is due,
We're one, but we're not the same,
And I think I love you more,
But so scared you'll love me less,
Sister, it's just me - this time all of me,
And I hope you still think I'm pretty
Now that you see
The scars of my tongue.

Joining The Star & Cheese Pizza Fellowship

They all sat in the upper room of the Paradise Hotel, sweating it out like a Finnish sauna, laughing and talking and learning more about each other. It was another long day of work and they let down here, no matter how hot it was. Bottles of warm Star populated the tables with cheese pizzas, one by one, making their way too slow to their hungry stomachs.

The room was packed with talent. Best selling authors, video producers, videographers, sound people, TV designers and builders, mental health professionals, executive directors, generous donors along with a few teenagers and a few children. It was the kind of collective talent that could intimidate a newcomer into the group. I was the newcomer, but there wasn't an ego to be found. All were welcomed. All were equal. Everyone I met greeted me with the kind of warmth that said, "I have always liked you and now we meet." It was humbling.

And the night lingered with friendships forming fast, marinating in stories and quickly becoming delicious. My introverted nature was subverted by generous inclusion and from that moment, I didn't want to miss a thing. In the goodness of being together, in the afterglow of a shared mission, in the shelter of each other, we communed with beer and pizza like bread and wine.




 

***UPDATE*** Social Poverty

********************UPDATE*********************
Just as I suspected.
Click here for related story.
*************************************************
There is a certain violence done to a person when loneliness isolates that person from real connection. That violence, once internalized, may explode.

Being marginalized, excluded, alienated, and sent to the edges is maddening. It makes body, mind, and spirit deteriorate into something less than human.

We have one task in life. Be human. And we cannot do it alone. Humans are not human in isolation. Isolation caused by social poverty drains the soul of its humanity, leaving flesh that functions, but does not live.

We must make friends. We must be friends. We must not settle for personal social wealth while others live - exist - in social poverty. We must invest time and meaning into people. We must allow some friendships to be costly in emotion and expensive in time. We must not merely be friends with people who can do something for us, we must also be friends with people who have nothing for us. In fact, if the only friends we have are people can do something for us, then there is a certain moral poverty that joins us in our social wealth.

We must befriend the unfriendable.

Cho Seung-Hui, of the Virginia Tech massacre, lived in abject social poverty. Had he some friends, he might still have had a mental disorder, but he might not have killed.

Loneliness Medicine

Loneliness is a ghost who lurks. It's not scary like a monster that can do violence. Rather, it is a Nothing that replaces Something. Anything it can replace, anything allowed to be released will be filled with this Nothing.

Loneliness can come without announcement and be present for long stretches of time undetected. Like an invisible leech, it can drain a person of the very thing that gives life. Loneliness is a parasite that kills slowly. It can be ignored by distraction into media and technology. It can be ignored by ritual, habit, and addiction.

I meet a lot of lonely people. You do too.

What can challenge loneliness? Meaning.

People must experience meaning in their lives. People cannot experience meaning in solitude. Friendship is the antidote to loneliness. Not aquaintances, not associates, not membership, not the number of people around - friendship.

Friendship is meaning.

On Friendship

Few gifts are greater than people who will never quit being your friend. I find it amazing how friendship is more important than performance, perfection, emotional stability, and competence. The fact that someone exists who will not cause harm or produce judgment trumps every inadequacy.