It began for me very early—writing in my awful cursive small stories on index cards and leaving them in library books, waiting room periodicals, and the phone books that would hang from phone booths. Some were confessions, others were love letters to the natural world, but most of the time I used the small blank paper to capture the quiet observations of my travels.

One such example was a card I left in the San Bernardino library in a book called “Expect the Unexpected.” I can’t imagine it still being in print, as I remember it being quite terrible, but I was smitten with the message and I left a missive about taking cabs in downtown Colima, Mexico and bailing on the fare. At 7 years old, I was pretty much an asshole. The point of the story I had left was that, for the entire ride, the cabbie thought he was getting the better of me but, as we arrived to the park in the center of town, he never saw a mop of black hair move so fast while laughing.

Expect the unexpected, indeed. My warning to the world that I was out there.

Time went on and the same impulse to use words as keys to open worlds was the only thing that ever could save me. I was floored by the imagery in Galatians (in the fullness of time) and Romans (dead to sin) far more than the promise of a risen Christ. I never begged a day in my life while in the years I was homeless and wandering the states, but I would write poems for food.

Not only did words unlock wallets and charity, it also unlocked doors to people’s homes. In Casper, Wyoming, I met a secretary in a fast food restaurant who bought me lunch and let me crash on her couch for a week in exchange for a haiku. The immediate connection between what I wrote and its recipient was intoxicating.

Words would beat down the walls and doors my fists could not.

...

Tune in to The Official Prose. Blog for the full article by Rolando Hernandez (@rh) later today at: blog.theprose.com/blog.

i’m 19, and a college student--

no, strike that,

i dropped out after a semester

because i couldn’t afford it--

no, strike that,

i flunked out because i couldn’t handle it.

the truth,

the honest truth?

a month before i turned eighteen

i was raped.

and with fingers on my throat

and in my skin

and in my dreams,

i only barely made it

through senior year,

but i thought that i’d be better,

for sure,

because i didn’t know what else to be,

but the fingers never left me

and it took all i had just to keep on

being.

and then two months after college started,

i listened to my friend kill herself,

heard her sob into the line,

and the bang, and the silence,

and i hated myself for not saving her

and i hated myself for hating her

and i hated myself because all i thought

before bursting into tears

was

no fair.

why did she get to do it,

why did she get to leave?

all my problems,

all my pain,

and she got relief,

and i was left behind.

and i couldn’t do it,

couldn’t go to class,

couldn’t go to work,

couldn’t find it in me to crawl out of bed

and look at the world.

everything was shit--

no, strike that,

i was shit,

and everything went wrong.

so i lied,

because it was all i remembered how to do,

and after i’d been kicked out,

i’d been taken in,

because i cried and crooned,

and wove a tale of not how i was pitiful,

but how i was poor,

because it was easier to deal with money issues

than mental issues.

but i made it through the year

and back to a place

that everyone else called my home,

where i was beaten and cursed

and told to die

(and what kind of home charges rent,

by the way)

by a person who didn’t even know how useless

i was.

as far as my mother was concerned,

i had a 4.0 gpa,

but even that

wasn’t good enough.

and now,

i’m out, or will be soon,

but i’m poor, for real,

working as a waitress at a job that doesn’t cover

my rent, and forgetting my past,

my skills,

in favor of the lunch and dinner

menu.

(i knew languages once, didn’t i?

built websites and programs,

spoke with natives in France

and learning more)

and what was the point?

no degree, no experience,

no money, no pride.

the fingers haven’t left.

i hear his voice,

and hers,

and mine,

all screaming.

i don’t know where i’m going.

i’m scared.

When I was a child, God was male. A magical man-like being that lived in the sky.

I was terrified of him.

I used to sing in a church choir and remember each Sunday the Vicar would say "You MUST be born again!" and every Sunday I wondered frantically how the hell I was going to get back into my Mum's tummy and be re-born.

When I was 7, I stole a SuperTed soap from a friend's bathroom and the next day at school I asked another friend, who I knew was pals with God, what would happen if you stole something? "You'll go to hell." she told me. I was petrified. I asked "What if it was just something really small?" and she said "It doesn't matter, you'll still go to hell". So I sobbed for weeks and prayed to God each night begging him not to send me to hell.

God, is dead.

Because, what I associate with God is this controlling, fearful, oppressive bullshit that causes fear and war and terror. God left my childhood with a darkness. I want to hug that 7 year old me that believed she would burn in hell.

I want to hug every child and adult the world over who is controlled by religious fear. Fear of whomever 'their God' is and what punishment awaits them. Or even worse, what reward awaits them for handing out punishment on God's behalf. It's dictatorial insanity. Why divide by fear when we can unite, as people of Earth?

Then, I discovered science. And thermodynamics. The first law of thermodynamics states that no energy is ever created in the universe and none is ever destroyed. Energy is constant. So when we die our energy continues, at one with galactic infinity. When stars die, they explode and blast out matter that then creates new stars and new planets. New life. One big cycle. Everything connected. Every atom in our body came from the nuclear furnace of stars. Stardust. We are.

I believe in energy. And through science I discovered my spirituality.

I believe that when you behave with compassion, with kindness and with love, you create positive energy that is sent out to your surroundings. When you say something nice to someone, it makes them feel good. The same works when you speak in anger, with disregard or contempt, you create negative energy and that is also transferred.

Some people say that that force, that energy, that infinity, is God. I think ultimately, every religion, spiritual belief and science text book are the same thing, when you take them to their highest possible level. God, Energy, The Universe. But when people label things; Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Paganism, then it becomes competitive and elitist. "My religion is better than your religion." "My God is better than your God." It's outdated. We've evolved past these segregated rules. Our language has evolved, our understanding, our scientific knowledge and our compassion. I love and respect kind people. I don't care what labels you want to give yourself or which religion you do or don't follow.

For me, this endless energy, radiating every particle of every single thing we know exists, that's not God. It's something far more beautiful and I can't possibly give it a name or a label. It just is.

The Universe. We're all connected.

Seek out the positive, the light, and be kind.

Peace and love to all.