The thought of your birthday stirs me - awake
“Without apprehension or apology”
I write in the Advent of Rituals
In harmony, comfort, genuine delight
Celebrate your halting of time
In your sacred season
-
Written by Brenda L. McCartney
Photographed by Thomas Francisco
Incisive decisions beat
Eyes smile to the gentle rhythm
Tulip bosom expressive all season
Seraphic energy molds
those who spring from
and around you
Feathers of nurture
Spirit laps no cost
As your crescent shape cradles
We honor
-
Poem by Brenda L. McCartney
Junkanoo in The Bahamas
On the first anniversary of one of history’s worst natural disasters, Haiti despair is still felt. “The earthquake drew a remarkable emergency response from the international community. It also prompted ambitious plans to reconstruct, even reinvent, the hemisphere’s poorest nation – to “build it back better.” Two-thirds of the 1.5 million Haitians left homeless by the quake still live in tents, and fewer than half the 45,000 t-shelters that the U.N. and other housing organizations had hoped to build by now have been erected.” There is a need to do more and the children of Haiti remains hopeful. “But the recovery process really hasn’t begun yet.” To add to their woes the people of Haiti have to deal with a recent cholera epidemic.
Today I pray for all souls (volunteers, leaders, the wealthy, dying) especially the poor, the hungry the unemployed all victims of persecution, injustice and discrimination of any kind.
Photograhed by Momiji
Sunlight streams
Leaf peeping
Orange tints
Bare boughs, bald moments
The sap of life
Remembered beginnings
Opened secrets
A mystery wrapped in an enigma
Winter’s solace
Kind peace in solstice’s afterglow
Liberty in eternal beauty
-
Written by Brenda L. McCartney
This morning an elderly friend drove up in the church yard with the back of his pick-up truck laden with spice leaves (pimento) for anyone who wishes to have some. I got so excited thinking about what I would do with the spice leaves after church. An older lady asked what could she use the leaves for, I told her that you can use it in souse, porridge, to cook meat, tea or as a bed for grill meats. Personally, I could not wait to go home to boil some porridge. What was truly priceless was a simple expression from my daughter as her eyes lit up and she said mama I love flour porridge that filled me with a sense of pride.
Tonight thinking about the porridge takes me back to the first time I came to the Bahamas and was home sick and cooked some flour porridge (flour pap) and my landlord at the time (I was in college) associated it with growing up poor. She was not an unkind woman and was just misinformed; I sighed and gave her a short shrug and concentrated on my porridge. The few second of discomfort were washed away as my flour porridge eased me through the sadness and longing for home that I felt and linked me back to my grandmother’s nurturing. Thinking about it now, if I grew up poor I did not know it at the time.
Sometimes in life because we are from different cultures/backgrounds there is an inability to connect and words said with certain intonations can have such a profound effect. My friends, we have no control over what people say or do we have to deal with it, perception is everything and only us knows what is important to us. In life we can find something to love about each person.
Photographed by Simon Jarratt
Fathers do take paternity leave to help his wife with a new born. Some employers do not understand the need for such request but a father’s presence is just as important for the baby as it is for the mom. Fathers do need to bond with their babies especially in those important first couple of weeks. In the United States of America unpaid maternity is mandated by federal law via the Family Medical leave Act (FMLA) for a mother if their company employs more than fifty workers. Ebony magazine (June 2010) explains that at least two states offer paid paternity leave.”According to Adrienne Samuels Gibbs in the Ebony article “Canada gives their dads up to fifty five percent of their salary or a maximum of four hundred and thirteen dollars a week.” Recently in the United Kingdom fathers will be given three months paid paternity leave effective April 2011. The father’s role as provider is secondary to the role as a nurturer, as a child will often take for granted basic needs that parents are obligated to provide (food, water and shelter). Yet they will notice if their daddy is not there and did not spend quality time with them. They will notice if their father is not concerned with what they are doing. Let’s all hope that fathers everywhere will continue to be supported and to give support where it is necessary as well.
Sometimes you have to grow up
To understand a dad’s love
The beautiful sweeping connections
The familiar story telling
Inextricable linked
His ways come to teach
An acquired taste
A standpoint roots, develop, mature
As your spirit lifts
-
Poem Written by Brenda L. McCartney
Photograped by Corretta Johnson
The dust of my emotions
Blow on the high heels of my vision
Web-like, tangled
Squiggles
Rise up
Shape
Breath
life
The flower
-
Poem by Brenda McCartney
Painting by sgeier.net
Illusions
Emotions sit on stilts
Rethinking
In the cycle of illusion
Emotions swelled
Nestled among conduits of deception
The natural order
Vanished in the house of blues
-
Poem by Brenda L McCartney
Image by Imagemore Co., Ltd.
The Moment
I
A purple flower
Left by her lover
Delivered in response to her letter
A few days earlier
II
The lone figure
Lay poised and beautifully adorned
Along the peaceful meadow
His return seems like forever
But he was waiting for dawn
-
Poem by Brenda L. McCartney
© 2011 McCartney House
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