Jaime Mathis and The Words

Jewel once said, "In the end, only kindness matters." Remember that line? It has come back to me like scripture as I have contemplated ways to move beyond Rightness or Wrongness and towards solutions for our beleaguered souls and planet. What does Rightness have left to offer? Where do we find ourselves when we practice kindness? Being Right and Being Kind. Sometimes they are the same things, but often they aren't. I went to Molalla, Oregon for July 4, Independence day in the USA. My whole immediate family was going to the parade and then to the rodeo afterwards. They asked Tobias, Espen and I along and I said yes. We were showered in candy and tractors. We were serenaded by America the Beautiful and other USA themed songs. We watched horses prance, longhorn cattle be ridden with saddles and a mobile porta potty mounted on a riding lawn mower whiz down the parade route. After that was over, we went to the rodeo and watched women's drill teams gallop at breakneck s...

I marched in the Pride parade for the first time this year with Tobias’ kettlebell gym, The Warrior Room. There were lots of rainbow booty shorts, lycra, kettlebells, and face paint. We paraded down the street, waving flags, blowing whistles, and screaming for the warriors who would bust out routines on command, pumping their bells and then dancing it out. The experience was a fiesta of color, music, fabulous creativity, and reminders that the first Pride was a riot (Stonewall). Espen and I grabbed a snack as our group waited in the staging area and decided to hit the bathroom before returning to the festivities. A wrinkled blonde woman bedecked in rainbows and glitter motioned us to the front of the line. “The little ones go first.” she said.   We thanked her profusely as she marshalled us into the room. “I wish this wasn’t’ just one day per year.” she said. I couldn’t agree more and found myself tearing up at the generosity and riotous exuberance all around us. Beauty is a ...

As many of you know, I was raised in a religious cult. Though it masqueraded as a mainstream version of Christianity, it had its own codes and symbols that would be unrecognizable to an outsider. It kept us inside its walls, though to the rest of the world we could come and go freely.  I was educated from first grade through my first college degree in their schools barring one year at Portland State University. I left despite a full ride scholarship because I lost a bet with my mother who was deeply worried that I would leave the cult should I remain. To tell the whole truth, I was a little worried I would too; it was so colorful, so self-confident, so...alive. So I slunk back to cult-land and finished my degree at an outpost university in England. There, I left the cult in my heart and mind but continued to attend school until I had my degree... and promptly had a nervous breakdown in Thailand after graduation because the stress of starting a life outside the boundarie...

(First printed in Gravel: A Literary Journal, December, 2018) https://www.gravelmag.com/jaime-mathis.html My lineage became fainter on April 2, 2018 when my paternal grandmother, Patricia Mae McDonald Mathis stepped out of flesh and onto the celestial trail home. These days it seems like my attention is either aimed at the farthest observable glimmer in the sky, or at the shrieking 5-year-old red giant about to supernova at my feet. But one afternoon as I stood alone on my porch, watching morning glories lifting and floating on the breeze, I clocked the fading path. There would be no more phone calls to Grandma when I found the time, no last-minute pop-ins to browse the family tree and its shoe boxes full of silver photos and frayed newspaper clippings. The line was silent. I sent her a card a week before she died, thanking her for her gift of 10 thousand dollars, given to each of the grandchildren as their inheritance. I told her that regardless of the money, I would always...

I recently read a pastor’s blog who is being billed by some papers as the “Rising Star of the Religious Left” . For a Christian, he’s pretty out there if you consider traditional voting patterns within the United States of Jesus. He’s trying to call Evangelicals off the scent of LGBTQI hating and immigrant bigotry while simultaneously consolidating a base of confused Christians that didn’t vote for Trump by letting them know they aren’t crazy.  It’s not you, it’s them, rings through loud and clear. While this is a great tactic for mobilizing support, it also continues to feed the polarization that has the US in its clutches. Me against you. Right against wrong. Hippie Jesus vs Clan Jesus. I got a degree in History back in the day and one thing I learned is that history is written by the winners. America likes to win.   And yet, the cost of being awarded the chance to write the history of this land is much higher than most folks might be ready to stomach. Th...

The space between me and the end of this 500-mile pilgrimage. The calm between skin diving into waves rippling my uterus down and a new human breathing air. The last time I took his face in my hands. The second before I forgot who I was and now.  It’s nothing and nowhere between two points, just a firing of lightning and elements fornicating in my brain. But it seems so real. Realer than the hangnail that tore white from pink skin, got infected, and screamed at touch. Realer than her black rimmed stare that sneered my 8-year-old heart into the corner. Realer than the cardamom main line from chai to nose on November mornings. Realer than the “F” I will receive if I write instead of read.  It’s just time and space, memory getting confused with all the parallel universes. But it seems so true.

Disease, discontent, illness, depletion, exhaustion, pain... chronic...these are states that  many of us embody whether it shows up in ongoing or acute health challenges, addictions, mental disturbances, existential crisis, or an undefined sense of something being not quite right. We are depressed, anxious, overweight, lonely, hypertensive, apathetic, disconnected, and discouraged.  What is going on? Why are so many of us sick and tired and unable to feel well? In my experience, these many faces of imbalance and diminished vitality are visible across political, racial, economic, and gender lines. As a systems thinker and big picture explorer, I am constantly looking for the path that connects the dots between seemingly disconnected proofs of an internal world in flux. As much as we have been taught to pop a pill or buy a product to soothe a symptom from headache to feeling frumpy, the quick fix never lasts because we do not live in a vacuum. We are, like trees, deeply...