bringing forth costs breaking

energy we can use

for a little while i’ve been wondering what lungs might teach me about liveliness and grace. as my sister prepared to run her THIRD! new york city MARATHON! last weekend i returned to this essay by Alexis Pauline Gumbs, and was reminded that the lungs can’t work without the the heart.¹ the heart is not peripheral.²

i returned to the essay-prayer again on Wednesday morning, after learning the election results, because my breathing was challenged and my heart was broken.³

the oxygen that the lungs bring won’t reach the rest of the body without the heart. oxygen is needed for metabolism, to convert food into energy we can use. the lungs also expel what’s no longer needed. this design is older than all of us. it holds up.

regarding the heart, on thursday i encountered this post from the artist Vanessa German and felt utterly gathered, assured, awestruck. i proceeded it to send it to several people because i felt so carried away. maybe because i felt delivered. she writes:

“They are telling me: Stay Gentle. They are saying, “Stay gentle on the inside. Where your heart is. Where the voice/s inside of yourself speaks to yourself: stay soft inside of you while the world is breaking apart around your body. All seeds break open to bring forth. Bringing forth costs. Bringing forth costs breaking. Everything that begins, begins from a breaking place. From a separating forth into the exploring place of possibility. They say, know this, and stay gentle. Something giving ultimate softness to your own insides. To the self that you know in your most private counsel. Let your heart breathe softness, gentleness into you. They are telling me that this space, this gentle room of being in the soul is how the light will get in. They say that when we are in this place we are able to receive the voice of divinity that exists in its fullest proportions around us at all times—often with constricted access to your living, daily, ordinary heart.
.
The ordinary heart is nothing to shrug at— please consider that the *ordinary heart* contains within its brightest kernel the same exact force of energy which began the experience of the universe. They are telling me that this is the force that is speaking into us with energizing vitality for our hearts, imaginations, and our visions.
.
This image here is a rose quartz portrait— memento mori— of our departed relative Marcellus Williams. He, who in the darkest brunt of his days, innocent and declaratively so, walked through that tunnel of spikes and fear speaking softness in the wisdom of the everlasting heart. The turmoil and the catastrophe did not stop his heart in a blistering explosive rage— it made him clearer.
.
Stay Gentle. Get Clearer. In your clarity you will make new visions. You will know who to share these with. This will give you energy that feels like light even in your feet. You will need this energy to move through these days. It shall protect and elevate you. So. Find— MAKE—Deep Gentleness for yourself. Stay Gentle.”

my heart was racing plenty this week. and i felt better when i remembered that this is one of many breaking points that is here to grow us.

i feel my pulse and yours, reminded that our hearts want us to find the energy we need and then put it to use. i notice our chests rise and fall, oh so gentle, reminded that we know how to let go and welcome.

these capacities are installed in us before we’re born. isn’t that loving? hearts the size of fists that actually hold entire planets. lungs the shape of wings that shape the entire atmosphere. we arrive with renewal and courage to spare, to keep giving away.

1. “In the maze of small blood vessels that process oxygen no one knows where your heart ends and your lungs begin.”

2. June Jordan in the film A Place of Rage says “my heart is not peripheral to me”, a line also featured in this beautiful newsletter, and which i got to see on Monday at BAM thanks to Hanif Abdurraqib — my notes / more poetic nourishment for u here.

3. “The past two years have challenged our breathing and broken our hearts in more ways than we can name. We have lost too many loved ones and then lost the chance to hold each other in our grief.  We have lost the way we used to live, the carelessnesses we didn’t even know we cherished.”