A Ready Heart.

Words, As Fruit #39

*Before we bite into today’s serving, I want to welcome those who are new here and thank you, in advance, for receiving what is shared. I write for many reasons, two currently at top of mind:

“Writing is one of the ways I participate in my own transformation.” — Toni Cade Bambara

“If we understood ourselves better we would damage ourselves less.” — James Baldwin

Now, without further ado…

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I’m not sure what my senses sense when they receive the word “calling” vs. “assignment” but for the past few months, assignment is the calling I am receiving with deeper recognition.

Assignment makes it clear that there are terms and conditions. Assignment makes it clear there is both studying and work to be done in order to grow and understand; in order to grow in understanding. You may ask now, as I do, “What is understanding?” The dictionary defines understanding as:

1. mental process of a person who comprehends; 2. superior power of discernment; 3. enlightened intelligence; 4. a state of cooperative or mutually tolerant relations between people; 5. an agreement regulating joint activity or settling differences.

The definitive words which standout most for me are: comprehension, discernment, relation, and agreement.

Understanding I (currently) believe to be an ongoing participation in full bodied listening and willingness to see not just as we are but as reality is.

In Words, As Fruit #33: Hard(er) Things I reflect on what I believe to be my present assignment.

“Presently, when I look in the mirror, I am seeing myself in the reflections of us, and deciding who I will be, and who you will see reflecting back to you. My hope is that who we both see is someone who recognizes, respects, honors and values the life of others to the same extent that there is value placed on the lives of me, and mines.

In replaying these words I hear my mother saying, “We are here to perfect our Loving”, a truth reveals itself to me. For my time here on this earth, one of my assignments is to perfect my Loving. In doing so, through these words and this work, I hope to create space for us, who choose, to examine our own reflections, consider our own assignments, and, perhaps, decide that Love and Loving is a movement we will not, cannot, and choose not to excuse ourselves from being apart of […]”

The past two weeks, or maybe it’s been the past two months, or twelve months, or the last few years, I have felt a rising tide of emotional overwhelm. In feeling through the overwhelm, the terms, conditions, work and study necessary for the fulfillment of this assignment, to perfect my Loving, have begun to materialize.

“To be overwhelmed and ask "what have I got myself into" is always a reminder that I'm demanding more from myself than I ever have.” — Nipsey Hustle

Earlier this week, a friend shared a clip from this interview between bell hooks and john a. powell (video also embedded below). I replayed the clip about 20 times, allowing what my listening was stirring up to unsettle me. The apprehension, doubt and fear was, and still remains to be unsettling but because I know that when emotions or feelings are stirring, I am meant to lean in and jostle around with them, I took an evening to continue feeling, and journaled.

As I journaled, pouring more words than I realized had welled up within me, I began thinking about my heart’s calling and “ready”.

What is ready?

Is ready something we build, like a muscle? Or, is ready something we build like an extension, or addition to a house?

Is ready something we already embody? Or, is ready something we create?

I am asking because I so desperately want to be ready, for so many things, but I think I have forgotten, or never really knew what ready is.

Is ready even something you know, with the mind? Or, is ready something you feel, in your body?

Is ready a capacity we have, and then grow?

Is ready a finish line? Or, is it a horizon, as in a line that we see but we never really reach?

Is ready a shore, and we are a wave and so we leave, and also return to meet it?

What I am trying to understand is, is ready a place? Or, is ready siphoned from the ground where we already lay, and it is that we need to remember where ready rests?

Danielle Mckinney Eternal, 2022. Acrylic on canvas.

These journaled thoughts brought me back to this passage from ‘The Source of Self-Regard’ by Toni Morrison, an essay entitled, ‘The Site of Memory’

“You know, they straightened out the Mississippi River in places, to make room for houses and livable acreage. Occasionally the river floods in these places. “Floods” is the word they use, but in fact it is not flooding; it is remembering. Remembering where it used to be. All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was. Writers are like that: remembering where we were, what valley we ran through, what the banks were like, the light that was there and the route back to our original place.”

— Toni Morrison, ‘The Site of Memory’

Maybe the rising tides of overwhelm are the flooding that, if we choose to flow with it, allows us to arrive back to our original place. Maybe “ready” is an original place…

Are you ready?

What is “ready” for you?

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I have taken to calling Judy (Mom/Iya) before I publish these posts so I can read them to her out loud. The reading out loud, to someone, allows me to edit a bit more thoroughly. When I got to the “Are you ready”, “What is ready for you? questions, Judy began answering. The following is some of what she shared.

“When I come through my mother’s womb, I have been given everything I need to get done what I am here to do.

The way Ishmael Tetteh explains this is that when we come through the mother’s womb, the door shuts behind us and the world we enter into, and the Mother’s breast, is already ready for us.

In terms of ‘assignment’ and ‘calling’, assignment is more a frame, and a box. A calling has no box. This is to say, assignment is to know what it is. Calling, we may not know what it is. So I say, ‘Life is unfolding before me.’ And to back this up, when I say that as an adult I was ready everyday to step into the unknown, it was a trust factor to say that I trust that I will be ready.

It just is…” — Judy C. Leonard (jcl)