The Locker Room

My nudity is my activism.  I declare this a war-free zone.  I expect nothing but praising glances for this body that lifts heavy things.  For this body that moves each day only by some perpetually renewed miracle.  For this body, with its dimpled soft flesh and stretch marks, indestructible evidence that I made life.  For this body that keeps showing up and taking its rightful space.


This body is a prayer, a song of praise, for my Creator, who brings forth and sustains life in shouts and cries, in panting breath and racing heart, for the violent perfection of the universe we inhabit.

I own this body.  It is a gift I possess alone.  And I share it with you now, you onlookers who hide your breasts and body hair and instruct your girl-children to look down and change in bathroom stalls, as an act of optimism, as a peace offering.   

100 blessings, meditation on UCSB shooting

Small Child says "thank you" 100 times a day.  100 blessings.  Such simple, reflexive, automatic, persistent, normal gratitude.  Gratitude for receiving simply what she so absolutely deserves.  Gratitude for receiving so much less than what she absolutely deserves.  Did she learn it from me?  I hope so.

Two women, five men.  Two girls, five boys.  Future engineers and politicians of America.  Future mothers and fathers.  None of us is innocent of your death.  Every leering gaze, every laughed-off comment, every swipe of lipstick that makes me "pretty" is a stab of the knife.  I say a hundred blessings on your mothers and fathers.

I woke in fear that my late-sleeping child would not wake up today.  But she did, and before "good morning" she walked over to tell me about the new toy she was fixated on.  Our conversation needs no preface.  You are always alive and present for me.  Your heart is my heart.  Your soul is my soul.  I say 100 thank-yous for your being, for your aliveness.