Cazimi Oath

2/28/24

The last time this occured- a conjunction of the

Sun

Mercury

and Saturn-

I was 25 years old and living in my grandparents’ downstairs apartment.

We made an oath to join a church -

a community that enveloped us with friendship, welcome and equity

(then sank into fear and infighting many years later. A devastating loss).

To this day, one of my best friends is Judy who also joined the church that day. We kept our oath to be faithful to it, by speaking truth to power.

In that season of church-joining I had just returned from a road adventure around the country.

Let's stay with that part a minute.

Earlier yet, newly married, I had trudged to work daily in Palm Bay, Florida to offer some vague sense of case support to kids in a headstart classroom.

One child had been a “crack baby” as they said so callously then.

She had cried so much one morning and then another child kept clawing at me and calling me “Mom” in front of her mother

during a home visit.

They wailed so much that my womb ached and I started my period uncharacteristically early. Then I cried, myself, in the bathroom.

Within a few months I would quit that job. I couldn't address the systemic problems. Not then. I wasn't meant to be there. I had nothing to give back. No inspiration or presence. No internal elegance.

But I could buy a cheap VW Camper, take off on $40 a day, and travel all over the US and Alaska journalling, hiking and hoping. A privilege beyond measure. I slept to the sounds of coyotes yipping in the prairie grass and sage.

One day I was sitting in that camper named “Hunny” with the vintage windows popped open at an angle and a hummingbird flew right into the van.

She hovered in front of my face. We came together - hummingbird, me and that bright sunny van in a cazimi.

I looked at her in slowed time. She looked at me. Behind us the Colorado mountains stared through the windshield at us both and we all merged.

I swore in that moment I'd never forget beauty and magic.

By 1996 I was deep in the church I joined and entering the ministry. In the midst of limiting systems and a beloved church that would fall to fear, I looked for life everywhere.

Why do I recall these things tonight? These gateways? These contrasting vows?

And what oath shall I make tonight, as the systems I'm co-creating labor and groan for better ways?

I have no physical womb to pain me now, but this week I felt the ache anyway as if I still did-

the longing for healing the world. The desire to make pacts of loving communication and patient, spacious partnership - but with whom?

The tug to leave the sinister systems behind and know more sweetness.

Here's an oath that will support me and all that I love.

To never turn my back on a sunset.

To cherish the briney gulf breeze like the warm brush of a partner's open hand.

To melt into the heaving exhalation of grief under gracious camelias.

My oath is to resist -

to do the work, yes

to open and hurt and bleed sometimes

to not look away as we walk through the valley of death

but also

to push back

with the full weight of my desires.

I promise you, beauty

I promise, rippled wonder…

I will love you as you curl around the nape of my days

and ecstasy will be my justice.