Oct 28, 2010

Ms Lila's Odd Sermon

If I said these words were coming from the center of my heart I would be fooling you. I would be laying a shovel full of shit right on your doorstep. If you smiled back dancing around the pools of excrement I would know this is a useless conversation.

Now, I don’t want you to close the door or slam it or anything like that. I want you to smile that smile we get when we willingly open our mouths for the hook. It’s the awareness that counts.

If you have lived long enough you know there are stories after stories with varied interpretations. It’s a bloody business. You can hear a story but you got to get it in your sites, got to get that tension on that trigger finger and aim right for the heart of the matter. We are going to dress down a full bull moose, flay that sucker, butcher it, separate its organs, and bury the gut sack off the side of the road so it doesn’t poison anyone.

With that analogy the nice people have fled. The clean people are in the bathroom washing themselves. And you and I can get down to a real conversation. Don’t let this fancy red dress with the cleavage fool you. I have a monk’s robe underneath it and I have taken vows. Well it’s not exactly a monk’s robe and not exactly the big three vows. You know, Poverty, Chastity and Obesity. If you keep looking at me like that I won’t be able to continue. So open your mouth because the hook is coming now.

I have been a woman all of my life. Some there are that come into my body. Some there are that come out of my body, and some are voices that dwell in my soul. Hot on my lips are words from a thousand mouths. Each one is speaking, singing, uttering moans, cries and truths. They say mama. They say come here, baby. Let me touch your sleek skin. They say virgin, whore. They call me beloved. They say lies.

In the beginning of the twenty first century I’m heading for Africa holding some Paleolithic goddess in my mind when she says she is really living in my tits and between my thighs.

I got my kids, my heart and two hands, a plot of dirt and friends I make life with. I got faith when words fail and eyes that open like the dawn each day. I got a body made for life and dance, a sound in my voice and voices to sound, an old woman living in me, so old she just nods at life and death. Another weeps at the sound of rain, the smell of dew.

I got white women, black women, even got men in me, and babies, babies wailing in the night. I got war in me, bombs falling, bodies dropping, hate splashing just like blood.

I got hunger and pain, tears I never cried. I got land in me, mountains and a meadows full of berries, oak trees and oceans and flowers wild and tame. I got spirits in me, animals and chanting men, women who live under the sea. I got love in me and doubts and fears, the bread of heaven in me, breasts and vulva and womb space for life. In my heart sometimes, sometimes, I have silence.

Some kind of power moves in me, it feels like life, some kind of power singing me, it feels like faith, some kind of power weaving me, it feels like courage. Love, deep love smiles, it laughs in me, rage, pain, grief got a s-ound in me, a h-iss, a g-rowl, it r-oars.

Who is me? Sow cow woman with the teats of a buffalo, woman with the teats of a swan, woman with the teats of a elephant. I see sows in the sky, winged sows stretching themselves, how high the heavy burdened things can fly astounds. Astounds, a sound down from the sky.

I would land in the lap of luxury and warn them all of the sorrows of their ways, O the burdens of rent paid, the stench of the greenbacks hidden under the sink. I would beat that old rug, that prayer rug, I would beat those beads and make them sing finally fine sound found, howls, growls, free forms.

I am here to tell you, if you got the heart for it, change is possible, going to tell you a tale, a brazen tale, but worth the telling. Now I was sitting in church when I noticed a twitch between my legs. You may have had this problem yourself. I tried to ignore it but this twitch it kept a twitching and a twitching. My poor body seemed to be blaspheming, so I prayed to the Holy Spirit when Jesus came.

He say to me, “Woman, you got yourself an idol. You got to kill it.” I was hesitant to say the least but I know what happens eternally to them that's got themselves an idol. I did not want that to happen to me.

I stammered, “I am dust and ashes. I am dust and ashes. Lead me to the priest.”

Well Jesus, he lowered his glasses and looked at me hard. He said, “Honey, you had better go to your soul and seek some wisdom.”

“Soul”, I cried, “my body is blaspheming, ” when a voice roared out, “BLESS THAT BODY.” There was a wild wonder within me, a sort of singing in my cells.

“SouI”, I cried, what is your name? She said, “I AM.”


Well, I am not fighting any more. I'm not trying to be good or bad. I am singing now, singing rock songs of sitting still. I am moving no more. I am not moving with your drum or his or hers or even mine any more. I am not fearing the life within me. I am not a courting death. I’m not defending no more. Wind is blowing through my body. I don’t hold on any more. I am sorry if you find me poor, sorry if my life offends your heart. But I am not fighting any more. I’ve got no excuse. I just is.

Hey granny, where you going, granny, with your bright hat and lipstick on? Hey granny, got you a dance you’re moving to? Granny smiles all the while. She’s a drooping sow but cow no less. She got wings and a pair of moccasins for earth visits. She got memories of how many lives she led in this one life like a man with a kaleidoscopic third eye ball watching the race toward nowhere.

Got you a dance, mister, some kind of jazz tune that stirs. Forget the blues. There’s a saxophone wanting to play a note that no one has ever heard. Some old street woman is talking the blues with a yellow eyed man on the move. It’s a show worth seeing and getting free from to be free for something that moves like the flow of a river, like the sound pounding in the blood, the cows chewing on the cud digesting life.

I am in country now. I am in a place that is my own. I am that place. Country dwellers know. In country I gave birth. In country I am fertile ground. I am food and the flower of the land, big mama with heavy tits, country talk for country living folks. I breathe air, take up space. My blood flows.

For the longest time I could not remember my own screams until the dreams of women burning, until the screams of women burning woke me in the night. Fiery mamas called my name. I saw their faces in women who passed each day. At night I covered my ears and wept. One morning I looked in the mirror.

Now I nestle my children, my daughters, my sons, sisters, brothers, husbands and friends. I nestle them in and I push them out. Three naked trees stand outside my window. They chide me, Child, remember, take your hand from the flame. I'm country now. I know my boundaries well.

You speak of redemptive love as if you think when the fish has finally flavored the sea with his life some sort of debt has been fully paid. I say no. I write with my left hand now. That crazy old woman keeps laughing. That crazy old woman keeps laughing and laughing and laughing. She won't sit still.

She tells me, take the scales from your eyes, girl. Now I can't sit still. I'm wiggling in my chair. Talk about wiggling, I feel like a damn worm woman. She says, when you gonna dance girl? When you gonna get your ass up and dance?

That crazy old lady's just wiggling in me and she won't stop laughing.

Pretty soon I'm gonna be laughing in church. When the preacher gets up I'm gonna be just laughing. Someone's tickling my belly button from inside. Jesus, what am I gonna do? He says, “When you gonna get your ass up and dance?”

I freed myself from the grip of myself. I liberate and levitate. I no longer sit in my fear. The spells I cast are CLOUDS IN THE SKY, MOON ABOVE MOUNTAINS.

You understand the necessity of silence but do you see the indispensability of drum sounds in our community. That’s what the man said. I heard him and I heard the bird tapping at the wood of the tree. And I heard the first word of my heart pounding.

“You’re walking like a woman whose body’s got a rhythm,” that’s what he said, stepping from his tent, selling incense at the Saturday Market. Don’t get me wrong this isn’t about a come on to me. What he saw in this woman just made him plain happy. JET PLANES MOVING THROUGH MY SOUL. LOUD LAUGHTER SINGING ME.

The first day my car died I walked the highways, RUSHING CARS WHIRRING BY ME. Waited at the bus stop, then stumbled to a seat. In the rhythm of the bus I found my peace. NEXT STOP ALLELUIA STREET. Thank you, they yelled as they left their seats. God bless you, man, they yelled as they left their seats. SWEET RHYTHM, SWEET DRUM, SWEET NOISY BEAT.

Adjusting my body to the space around me, making room for the sounds and rhythms abounding Is a meditation I had ignored, a pure awareness of physical joy, a healer’s gift to unbind me.

Consider that some things you do, some ways you have, some states of being you feel are full of wild babies, the colors of paint, the smell of clay. Some bellies are pregnant with the work of wild babies reaching out through womb and heart and sex. Those children stay to be born over and over in dirty hands in eyes of fire and words.

Some babies play in pain, labor to be what they are. Some bellies are full. They contract, push forth wild babies. The tongue flicks to lick the birthing blood of their wild wild way. And I, and maybe you, are hungry for their taste.

Honey, I see that heavy sack you are carrying, those fancy shoes, and those technological gadgets that own your soul, those “have to’s”, those dutiful social time thieves. It doesn’t take a psychic with a silk scarf wrapped around her to see those credit cards, each nailing your poor foot to the dance floor, like the “have to’s” do, until it’s the wax museum of your life – a statuary of slavery, something owning you.

I feel the heavy shame bag, self -judgment, the quite despair on your hunched shoulders, all the voices telling you how you have failed. It’s a love crisis. Now, you tell me when the fish has finally flavored the sea with his life some sort of debt has been paid for your soul’s failure to move with the ecstatic dance. It is THE invitation, HIS invitation.

I say the gulls are calling. The gulls are calling. They're ready to pick bones. They say, when you gonna get your ass up and dance?



Copyright 2010 by Lila

Biography

Ms Lila is obviously a spiritual woman. She has called out her message from sidewalks, street corners, bars, poetry slams, a Chautauqua circuit, and even a legit theater.

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