YOKED

Jules squirted some sunscreen onto her palms before massaging it into her shoulders and the hard to reach blades of her back.   As the thick, white lotion spread, its scent drifted through the salty ocean air and I recognized it immediately.   Bonne Bell cotton candy lip balm.   I wore it religiously throughout seventh grade, convinced that icy pink was a good look for me.   It was the kind of silvery shade that older, high school girls were wearing.   I had a sparkly pink mini-skirt to match—one that received loads of compliments.   I do not miss the goopy feeling of synthetic gloss smacked across my lips, but the smell, oh God is it delicious!   It’s sinfully sweet, even better than real cotton candy, with an aftertaste of some inscrutable, tingling mint.   After all this time, more than a decade, the scent still moves me and I have to control the urge to reach over and smear Jules’ Ocean Potion’s SPF 30 all over my lips, just for old time’s sake.

There are times when just looking out at the world is too much. With impeccable self-possession, she flaunts color, texture, pattern, dimension, and flickering foils of light.    All cascade through my gossamer lens and I am overtaken by the presence of these things.   Only then do I see why photos and video recordings are so widely cherished—they hold the focus, which hurried eyes that have seen-it-all can not grasp.   Yes, much is required to give pause, to linger longer and let all that in. Oh, but how I long to receive the world, to be daily engorged with streams of color, shapely spectacles or just plain matter.   All of my patience and attention I will exchange for one glimpse of that deep-down presence in things.   Yet, after my eyes roam the rolling country, tracing every verdant dip and golden contour, they fall upon him – a glorious human face – and I do not know if I can bear it any longer.   I must look away.   All that beauty looking back at me. 


 The Invitation by Oriah Mountain Dreamer It doesn’t interest me
what you do for a living.
I want to know
what you ache for
and if you dare to dream
of meeting your heart’s longing. It doesn’t interest me
how old you are.
I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool
for love,
for your dream,
for the adventure of being alive. It doesn’t interest me
what planets are squaring your moon...
I want to know
if you have touched
the centre of your own sorrow
if you have been opened
by life’s betrayals
or have become shrivelled and closed
from fear of further pain. I want to know
if you can sit with pain,
mine or your own,
without moving to hide it
or fade it
or fix it. I want to know
if you can be with joy,
mine or your own,
if you can dance with wildness
and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes
without cautioning us
to be careful,
to be realistic,
to remember the limitations
of being human. It doesn’t interest me
if the story you are telling me
is t...

In a recent conversation with a perfect stranger, I mentioned that I would be starting my Masters of Divinity at Harvard this fall, to which the perfect stranger replied, “That’s great, I just hope you don’t lose your faith there.” Lose my faith?   What a funny expression.   Is that akin to losing your marbles, mind, hair, virginity or orthodontic retainer (I have personally lost 8 retainers, mostly because I forgot them in the napkins I threw away).    The way he said “lose your faith” implied that it’s here one minute and then, whoops, gone the next, as if I have little agency in the matter. Of course, I know what is meant by the expression.   Critical questions and religious diversity, both hallmarks of a graduate education at Harvard, are viewed by some as potential threats to one’s faith- a slippery slope of reasoning, casuistry, and uncensored exposure that can lead to the total unraveling of a person’s faith.   I am continually shocked by the white-knuckled inflexibility...

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