I Give You Back

I’ve had a very difficult time posting much of anything lately. I don’t seem to be much of a blogger anymore. Perhaps it is just a phase, but I haven’t made time or had much inspiration in a while. I am having fun with some artistic release as Moonface Martin in “Anything Goes” at the Aloha Performing Arts Center. I suppose that is where my blogging goes.

Someone showed me a great poem recently, however, and it communicated very well some of what God has been showing me about fear, love, power, and self-control. For a glimpse into that you can read a simple, but favorite, bible verse at 2 Timothy 1:7. For God does not give us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of self-control.

The poem is authored by Joy Harjo, a Native American poet, writer, and musical artist of Cherokee descent. Enjoy.

I Give You Back
By Joy Harjo

I release you, my beautiful and terrible fear.
I release you.
You were my beloved and hated twin, but now, I don’t know you as myself.
I release you with all the pain I would know at the death of my daughters.

You are not my blood anymore.

I give you back to the white soldiers who burned down my home, beheaded my children, raped and sodomized my brothers and sisters.

I give you back to those who stole the food from our plates when we were starving.

I release you, fear, because you hold these scenes in front of me and I was born with eyes that can never close.

I release you, fear, so you can no longer keep me naked and frozen in the winter, or smothered under blankets in the summer.

I release you I release you I release you I release you

I am not afraid to be angry.
I am not afraid to rejoice.
I am not afraid to be black
I am not afraid to be white.
I am not afraid to be hungry.
I am not afraid to be full.
I am not afraid to be hated.
I am not afraid to be loved,
to be loved, to be loved, fear.

Oh, you have choked me, but I gave you the leash.
You have gutted me but I gave you the knife.
You have devoured me, but I laid myself across the fire.

I take myself back, fear.
You are not my shadow any longer.
I won’t hold you in my hands.
You can’t live in my eyes, my ears, my voice my belly, or in my heart
my heart my heart my heart.

But come here, fear.
I am alive and you are so afraid of dying.

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