Cristen Rodgers's Blog, page 2

I Want to See

I have to comprehend things deeply. I need to take the time to see them inside out. I crave a deeper understanding of life and all things in it. People. Places. Ideas. Art. Nature. I yearn to love them all; and this is my way of falling in love. First by fully seeing, by truly knowing them.

This can be a gift, and it can be a curse; because to truly know anything takes time. And time in this world is so rushed.

Things seem to trample over each other in a steady procession of attention demands. Like a circus where the acts have all been triple-booked and each has far too much embellishment, the world feels at once overwhelming and incredibly dull when I am not given adequate time and space to delve into any one thing, for the cacophony of twelve others screaming for the next act.

I think this is why I so adore nature, art, reading, writing, animals, children, silence, and divergents of all different angles.

They are what they are. They don’t pile on frills and makeup and backgrounds, and they don’t feast on your attention like mosquitos in a Florida summer.

Instead, they just are. And all they ask is that you are too. They ask one thing loud and clear. Be with me, as I am here with you.

These things give me a sense of giving and receiving. Observing and revealing. Seeing and being seen in return.

I suppose that’s also why I tend to prefer older art to more modern takes. Because it speaks without asking, without begging or competing or demanding anything of itself or the observer, like so much of the modern world seems to do.

It just is.

As they all just are.

As I am, while I explore the thousand layers of a tree leaf, or hundred shades of a personality, the decades of stories in a short poem, or the endless lives of an ocean wave.

I want to see. I want to understand. I long to love. As much as I can. For as long as I can.

©️ 2025 Cristen Writes

Celebrate

The word ‘protest’ doesn’t seem to accurately reflect what I’m seeing on the streets.

And that’s exactly how it should be.

Sure, we hold signs that tell the world what we reject in this current reality – but the energy and actions we are demonstrating have nothing to do with rejection and everything to do with creation.

And that’s what this is all about.

What are we collectively creating?

And what I see are people of all walks of life coming together to say,

Let’s care for one another.

Let’s accept one another.

Let’s come to understand one another.

Let’s love our neighbors.

Let’s love our earth.

Let’s make a change for the better.

Let’s celebrate our commonalities and hold loving space for our differences.

Let’s do better.

Calling out the bullshit might be what the media outlets are picking up, but creating something better is what we’re really putting down.

So they can go on calling them protests, but here in my little pond, I think I’m gonna start calling them celebrations.

Here’s to celebrating all that we’re doing right, and all that we can do better.

~ Cristen Writes

Get to Work Having Fun

Find that place where the noise fades and weight lightens. Look for the movements and actions that allow each aspect of your truth to flow seamlessly – where you still see the truth, in its well-lit streets and its dark alleys, but your heart remains open and your voice is strong.

Look for that place where you are still and making waves at the same time, where the tension between peace and activism relaxes, where the walls between stillness and change crumble, where you can make a difference while being one hundred percent true to your own heart and soul.

Find your art. Your joyful, playful flow. Your natural expression and comfortable being. Find the middle ground, whether it’s on the streets surrounded by other lovers and thinkers and hopefuls, or its out in the middle of the forest talking to the trees – or both.

Look for that middle ground and set up camp there. Light a candle and lay out the welcome mat and find your tribe and bring them along.

This is your path, and your path is how you affect change for the better. Don’t look to others’ paths unless it is simply to ask yourself if you can make some magic by combining them. Find YOUR path and walk it with full confidence that your every step matters.

Let it flow and evolve. Your path today may be entirely different than your path tomorrow. So keep your eye on the center and let it flow from there. Be open to new ways of expressing, of helping, of connecting and loving. Be open, but be true first to you.

And accept, not only that others might not understand, but also accept that it might not always be exactly right. It’s a hard pill to swallow, but an important one. Because you won’t always be right. That’s an important part of the journey.

But if where you’re at feels like love, it feels like home, it feels like activism and peace at the same time – then your heart will guide you the rest of the way.

You matter. You can make a difference. And you can do it without getting caught in a fight-mentality, without sacrificing your softness, without hurting others or yourself, without perpetuating a story that is not yours.

You can make a difference. Just find that place, learn how to live there, and get to work having fun.

©️2025 Cristen Writes

White petals

Morning sun spills through the window

at seven,

painting gold columns on the wall.

Beyond stands a white-flowered sentinel,

perfumed,

branches nimble, and green, and tall.

A world of perfectly simple treasures,

and I,

completely enamored of them all.

©️ Cristen Writes

The Resistance

I wont accept your rules, and I don’t recognize your authority.

These roots run too deep for salutes and pressured conformity.

My wings are ancient and carry me far above all that noise –

out of reach for rules, and controls, and tin soldier boys.

I won’t bow to your flags or dance to your drums.

I flow with the sea, moved by earth’s rumbles and hums.

Some wilderness mere men will never be able to tame,

no matter how many papers you sign, or white collars obey.

I’m riding the wind and watching down from the skies,

as your propaganda falls flat, machine stutters, then dies.

©️2025 Cristen Writes

Still we rise

For every heartbreak there will be healing.

For everything broken there will be a new seed planted, and from those seeds a garden will grow.

For each loss there will be a blessing added.

For every fear there is a hope.

Hope.

The water that opens seeds.

The balm that heals our wounds.

The birth when all is turned to ashes.

When darkness rises, we rise as well. In hope, and love, and peace.

We rise with the sun, revealing all for what it is.

We rise with the moon, illuminating all for what it can be.

Darkness cannot extinguish itself. Only light can do that. But it can reveal itself.

And as it does, we rise. In hope. In unity. In love.

We are the seeds. We are the water. We are the hope.

©️ Cristen Rodgers

Foxglove Daisy Tulip

You can plow the earth, leave lifeless hills,

fill dumpsters painted army green.

You can don your masks and silly guns,

head out to parks, and make a scene.

You can twist the prophets’ holy words,

say your prayers like show and tell.

You can disparage dissent, lie, cheat, steal;

you can curse and arrest and yell.

There’s so many things that little men will do,

to prove that they are big and strong.

You can ban books, replace fact with fiction,

and manipulate others to come along.

You can defile the people who chose you,

and tell them to look the other way.

But there isn’t a power in heaven or earth

that can take your greatest threat away.

No matter what you do or say,

no matter how big your machine can grow,

It will never be quite strong enough,

it’s inherently flawed – just so you know.

You can topple a forest and pave it over,

but they’ll always be a seed.

You can drown the world in propaganda,

but storm waters always recede.

You can replace flags and statues,

burn and bury and outlaw the past,

You can mandate the classroom,

but there will always be a question asked.

You can move on to cages and chains,

but there’s always someone who finds a key.

There’s so many things you think you can do,

but in the end you’ll never control the free.

©️2025 Cristen Writes

Let it go

We’ve all heard it. Read it in books. Seen it plastered on tee shirts, even, like a three word mantra that’s relatable to just about everyone, and therefore is quite marketable.

Let it go.

What those three words don’t tell you is that it’s not as straightforward as it sounds. It is. But it isn’t.

Like most things, this tiny slice of over-served advice can work to better the world, or to derange it.

And like most things, it comes down to whether you have the backbone to Do The Work.

‘Let it go’ doesn’t mean that you should stop caring. It doesn’t mean stop trying. It doesn’t mean stop looking. And it certainly doesn’t mean stop feeling.

I wonder at times if perhaps our collective excitement over the western discovery of detachment had the unexpected consequence of breeding a sort of apathy, or even a group think cognitive dissonance.

After all, there are literally millions of people in our country right now whose life jackets have been ripped out from under them when they were already struggling to breathe – all while others are drinking cocktails on million dollar yachts and selling you tee shirts that say ‘let it go’.

As if we could forget, ignore, or become numb to things to make them better. Or just pretend they aren’t there and somehow still preserve our own personal joy.

But that’s not what it means. And it’s why those people require million dollar yachts just to feel alive.

You can’t let something go if you’ve never held it.

If you haven’t cradled it in your arms and cried for it, if you haven’t looked it in the face or felt rage rising up inside of you as you think on it – if you haven’t held it – then you are not ready to drop it.

And what happens to the things that we try to drop without ever truly picking them up? They get hidden. They get buried. They fester. And if we continue to look away? They turn to rot.

Rot is what happens when you ignore the pain rather than walk through it.

Healing is what happens when you hold it in your heart and you soothe it, you listen to it, comfort and forgive it until it starts to hush. Then you lay it back down to rest.

This is how you let it go.

Not by silencing it. Not by pushing it away. Not by pretending that it’s an enemy to be fought or an inconvenience to be discarded.

Not by raging against the life jackets. Or the people who need them. Not by sugar-coating the cocktails and yachts.

Letting it go means facing reality head on without getting pulled into whatever negative undertones it’s projecting. It’s those undertones you are transforming. But you can’t transform what you’re afraid to touch.

In life, you have to collect ALL the ingredients before you can make any kind of magic. You can’t just walk past the pain and collect a few samples of pleasure and peace and then concoct a world where everything is better.

You have to taste it all.

THEN you let it go. Then you rinse and repeat. Then you grow stronger. Wiser. More compassionate. More capable of making a real difference.

You have to pick it up first.

Then you can let it go.

©️ 2025 Cristen Writes

Until It’s Gone

You don’t know what you have until it’s gone. And you don’t believe that sentence until you do.

Once upon a time I thought that my partial attention and long distance prayers meant caring. I didn’t live there after all, in those countries where people were hungry, or scared, where children found themselves alone without the guidance and protection of their parents.

I thought I cared when I gave it more than half a thought, careful not to go too far, for fear of allowing myself to fall into that slippery slope of over-feeling for an under-developed world.

So I would travel for a brief moment into my imagination of their world, long enough to think I could understand. Long enough to hope for better, to ask myself what I might be able to do between my morning coffee and my drive to work, or slip in during my thirty minute lunch break – more often than not coming up with little more than a donation or a prayer and moving on.

I had the comfort of distance. And blissful ignorance to the real experience of watching what you love slowly degrade over time, or of seeing the people you called brothers turn a blind eye, bury their heads in the sand, or worse, laugh at the growing flames.

You don’t know what you have til it’s gone.

And now, as I drink that coffee, and I take that drive to work, as I try to take a thirty minute lunch break – I understand that the headlines don’t go to bed just because you did. The people don’t get to look away with you. The experience goes on, even after you’ve moved on with your day, even when it’s somewhere you’ve never been or seen or known.

The innocence, or ignorance, of trusting in the shape of your world, or of thinking for a moment that you knew what it meant to care about others’ – you don’t know what you have til it’s gone.

©️ 2025 Cristen Writes

One Taste

Why go searching for a piece of flint when you can just snap your fingers and light the hearth?

That’s where I landed as it relates to dating and romance. I know I am no trailblazer here, and in hindsight I’m surprised it took me this long.

But now that I’m finally here, I understand what all the buzz is about. The feminine is a powerhouse, an eternal spring of creativity and energy – and it wasn’t until I stopped pouring it into broken vessels that I realized its potency.

My focus shifted from serving a person, or a dynamic, or a dream, to serving my purpose.

My energy changed, or rather it was called back.

Where before it seemed to always be ‘just enough’, now it is abundant. Gone are the days of regenerating only to maintain a steady drain; now I am overflowing.

One taste of my own essence – without the push and pull of outside forces that I allowed to dictate – one taste was all it took.

I don’t know that I consciously made a decision to stay single. It’s almost as if there was just no other way to go. I couldn’t hide from the immensity of my own potential, but neither could I deny all the ways I was limiting it – by investing in all the wrong places and all the wrong ways.

And just like that, I have no more interest in that kind of investment. Not without an equal return. A tall order in this world for sure.

My hearth is already lit, and I’m not giving its warmth to those who only want to roast marshmallows. This space is now reserved only for those who would come for no other reason than to stoke the fire.

©️ Cristen Writes