Bosoms

I’ve been crying a lot lately. I think my tears come in seasons, but it’s almost like I cycle through such a profusion of seasons that by the time the tears come, I have forgotten that crying is something I do. I’m not a crier. Still, my tears do not feel unwelcome. They are quite at home to run down my cheeks and through my heart, and I am quite filled by the company they have given me.

Coming home from Oregon has been a process – one that had no set beginning and will have no end. It is part of the long thread of my story and I am glad for the color and richness it has added. For the first few days I didn’t know how to navigate the way that I clashed with people here. On the flight home I heard business people talk passionately about the economic growth potential of expensive agricultural technology and then chuckle over the absurdity of small farmers. During a layover I chatted with a woman who was quite concerned over her 4 year old son’s interest in the Disney Princess toy section at Target. I had to bite my tongue more than a few times.

Shortly after getting home, I got into an argument with my mom about my unshaven legs. I didn’t want to shave them. Everyone I lived with in Oregon loved me really well and the hair on my legs did not determine the extent of their love. There was something wonderful and right in moments when my friends touched my legs absent-mindedly without a second thought or a trace of disgust, while we lay in groups, sprawled on the floor, talking about anything and everything under the sun. I felt beautiful because I knew that whatever they were loving about me and whatever love they were loving me with must be curiously authentic. At any rate, I don’t particularly enjoy shaving, and thought that if I was feeling comfortable enough with myself to choose not to, that maybe my unshaven legs could say something to the world about beauty and love. My mom challenged me to consider the idea that people might not ever hear what my legs are saying over their own voices of judgment. Though I was frustrated with my mom for not taking my side, I know she was trying to speak out of love, not wanting me to sacrifice important relationships just to make some hippie statement.  Nonetheless, cue my first tears.

A few days later, I had a conversation with my dad about climate change. A tear came when I didn’t feel heard at all, or like he considered me a source he could learn from. (For the record, my parents are fantastic human beings and I am not trying to vent or vilify them. Sometimes they don’t understand my heart, but perhaps I should give them grace, because fantastic or not, they are indeed human beings, and being one myself, wish for grace on the many occasions I do not take the time to understand their hearts.)

More tears came a couple nights ago when I had a typical college-kid freak out moment because I don’t know what to do with my life. The problem is more that I know what I want to do with my life (love people fiercely, encourage others to love each other fiercely, and to teach people how to do that well and in a committed community), but I don’t know how to turn it into a practical, money-making job, and moreover, I don’t really want to. I just want to do it and have someone share their roof and their meals with me, trusting that I’m busting my ass at something worthwhile.

Tonight were the most recent tears. We watched The Secret Life of Bees together. I hadn’t seen it in so long that I forgot so much of the plot it was almost like watching it for the first time (I love when that happens!). It made me feel a lot of things, but most bitingly I felt deep sadness and hurt for the absence of compassionate love the protagonist had experienced in her life. This was complimented by an insatiable longing deep inside me for the messy, but nourishing love she was discovering as the movie unfolded. The movie made me cry three different times. Three times! And I hardly ever cry during movies.

So. Lots of tears.

A week or so before leaving Oregon, we were riding down the mountain into town and I proclaimed to my friends in the back of the bus how much I loved bosoms. “Big cushy ones,” I said. “There is almost nothing better than being pressed into one with loving arms that are wrapped around you, drawing you in. It’s so comforting.”

If I didn’t lose all credibility during the hairy legs part, I wouldn’t be surprised if you’re raising your eyebrows at your computer screen thinking ‘this girl is completely mental.’ And I probably am. But I stand my ground, just like I did when my friends gave me strange looks on the bus. I think the image of a voluptuous mother openly receiving her child into her is one of the most wonderful things I can think of. And I think bosoms like that have something to do with all of the tears I’ve been shedding lately.

The other day I was mulling over the tears I’ve had since I’ve been home, and I came to the realization that all my tears have been on account of love. 

The tears from the leg-shaving night came because I was sad that the world refused to know and love me unless my legs looked a certain way. They came because I was sad for all the people that would judge me because they themselves hadn’t experienced enough boundless love to give it without boundaries to others.

The tears from my conversation with my dad came because I feel most loved when I feel heard and understood, and I wasn’t feeling heard and understood, so I was not feeling the love that I wanted from my father.

The tears from the college-kid spaz attack were because I want so desperately for every single person in the world to know how valuable they are. I don’t want to sit behind a desk getting paid to love them, I don’t want to get a Masters Degree to help me do it better, and I don’t want to waste time doing menial jobs just to make money. I know there is value in counseling, in grad school, and in the everyday ins and outs of working within an institution. But I just feel… so strongly... that I want nothing more in my life than to love as many people as I possibly can in such a way that they know they are worth being loved. I feel like I will burst if I can’t do that with my whole being and my whole life.

The tears from the movie tonight just reiterated that. I saw brokenness because something vital was missing and I saw healing because that same thing was found and experienced and known.

Love is such a tricky word, because it means a lot of different things to a lot of different people, but I really think the desire for it is what we all dance our lives around. I think in the end, we all desire a bosom – a physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual embrace… a closeness, or presence, from another… one that knows our worth and doesn’t ever question our inherent belovedness. We all want to be beheld (or just held) with compassion and curiosity.

In all my heretical liberal hippie thought, I truly believe that God is the biggest voluptuous bosom we can find. And what I want more than anything is for everyone to find their home in it.

Minus the talk about bosoms, I talked to one of my professors in Oregon about this desire pretty frequently. At the end of our last conversation, he called me an evangelist. I told him I didn’t really know how I felt about that. It also surprised me, considering he had just walked through a season of frustration with me in which I declared that I wanted nothing to do with God if God wasn’t for everyone, whether they chose God or not. In fact, that’s not a phase. I hold to that. But at my core, I also hold to a God that is very alive and has a nature that is entirely (dare I say it?) incapable of not accepting everyone. And this God has enough bosom to go around. I suppose wanting everyone to be held in it makes me an evangelist. Just a very peculiar one.

All that being said, this was an obnoxiously long post. Sorry about that. But I sincerely hope for you that you find some kind of bosom to rest in, whether metaphorical or literal. And I am cringing to write this so disconnectedly over a blog post, but I’m going to do it anyway because apparently I’m an evangelist and can’t help it: Know you are worth being loved.

Shirt Made of Awesome

Remember that time I got the greatest shirt ever from my sister for Christmas?

A Reminder to Myself

"We're all just a bunch of awkward lovers." --John Linton (one of my professors in Oregon)

Cryin' Time

My professor and his wife sang this to us the night before we left. Their version was way better, but unfortunately I don't have a recording of it.

One Week Left

An excerpt from a paper I wrote the other day:

One of the things I’ve learned, only through many failed goodbyes, is that up until the moment you leave a place, you are still there – still physically present. Humans invest so much time and energy into dreading not being where we currently are or being excited about places that we are not, and in the process, lose out on a lot of precious moments. In particular, it prevents us from doing the very thing that I am desiring everyone here at the OE to do: it prevents us from saying goodbye well.

Rather than letting things peter out as people slowly stop being mentally and emotionally present, why can’t we all be really intentional about ending things really, holistically well? Kahlil Gibran, in his piece on death, asks “how shall you find [death] unless you seek it in the heart of life?” Why can’t our goodbye be in the midst of something really vibrant and full of life? Yeah, it might make the act of leaving hurt more, but at least you’re leaving something that is alive and hurting in the most honest way possible. 

I’ve been thinking about what it means for me to say goodbye well for the past week or so. For me it means a lot of different things, like noticing the sky every night and soaking in every minute that I can safely walk alone outside in the dark. It means writing about what I’m taking away from this place, how many of those things I want to implement into other parts of my life, and thinking about how I can do that. It means having intentional conversations with certain people and going to the gorge a few more times. 

Saying goodbye well probably looks like something different for everyone here, but I really really wish for the presence of everyone’s mind, body, and spirit in the next few weeks, whether they are ready to move on or not. I know goodbye will be sad for me, but I do not fear sadness. It is not an enemy. It is the dishonesty of a half-hearted goodbye that does not recognize the belovedness of that which it is saying goodbye to that I fear. Behind hard goodbyes are people, places, and lifestyles I have learned to love deeply. I hope for a goodbye that hurts, not for any bizarre masochistic reasons, but because grief points to love and love represents something very much alive and alive is what this place is, and what I want to remember it by. 

Big Trees

So there was this one time that I lived in Oregon and we went on a trip to the Oregon Coast  and on the way took a detour to the California REDWOODS! Gah! They're so freaking huge and spectacular! My friend and I ran around for about an hour, climbing over fallen trees, standing up inside some and crawling through hollowed out ones, gawking up at them and feeling so small, the whole time just spazzing out like crazy people because they were so big and so wonderful. Some of the trees I touched and climbed on were over 2,000 years old. If I could live inside a Redwood tree, I would be the happiest person alive. At any rate, we weren't there very long, but exploring the Redwood Forest probably made that one of the best days of my life.

The Coast was pretty sick nasty (in the best way possible), too. I saw about 30 starfish and went wave jumping in the frigid November pacific. Since then, we've completed another class, read some really great stuff, done some really intriguing and personal projects, and gone to San Fransisco, which was also quite amazing. Now we're on our last segment with about two weeks to go. It's weird to think of my time here wrapping up and moving back into the life of a regular college student. This has been quite the growing experience for me -- and not at all in the ways I expected. I'm not quite sure what I think about going back yet, but I'm not too worried about that. I want to continue to be present and invested in where I am. That just means thinking about how to say goodbye well.

Romance and Stuff

For the last segment (Oregon Extension language for "class") I spent my week long research project reading about marriage, celibacy, sex, friendship, and romance. I wrote a paper that tries to deconstruct the way western culture idealizes romance and talks about how we need better friendships. I'm pretty proud of it and super passionate about this stuff. I'm taking this moment to be shamelessly conceited and ask you to read my paper because I want the whole world to think about it. I'll (probably) still love you if you don't want to, but if you do, let me know and I'll send it to you.

Making Sense of This Place

Lately I’ve been spending a lot of time trying to name this place – this experience, this semester, this time in my life. Naming, or finding the right word for my experiences, has always been a really critical part of growth for me. For the past few weeks, I’ve begun to call this semester “a break.” I don’t really mean a vacation or a place to get away from traditional academics or anything like that. It’s been more of a break from me: a place where it’s okay to stray from the expectations I normally have of myself.

For as long as I can remember, I have always been pretty disciplined and responsible. Not responsible in the sense that I always did my homework perfectly or followed all the rules, but responsible in the sense that I have always been acutely aware of the ways in which my actions and the actions of others are beneficial and harmful. I almost always knew when a decision I was making was not the best one and I was easily able to see the array of possible consequences it could cause. I could almost feel the exact emotions that my words and actions provoked in others and I could identify why I responded in certain ways to the way others acted towards me. With an especially strong understanding of all of this, I have always felt obligated to discipline myself to make the “right” decisions all the time: the decisions that cared for people best – whether or not they knew they were being cared for – the decisions that suppressed desire that could be potentially harmful, the decisions that put me in places where I knew I would experience God most clearly.

Not too long ago, I started resenting this obligatory self-discipline. It felt like nothing was happening organically in my life anymore. I was so hypersensitive to what was best for me and for other people that I was always creating experiences and relationships – causing them, organizing them, forcing them into my life. It didn’t seem like they were happening naturally, and I grew bitter about that.

Tired of being Ellen, the disciplined and responsible one who counsels her friends and doesn’t really ever need a loving kick in the ass because she can give it to herself, I found myself at the OE, not wanting to be that anymore. I stopped listening to the voice on my shoulder that says “be disciplined. Be responsible. Make sure you’re making the right choice, now” and I started listening to the voice on the other shoulder that says “to hell with it. Do whatever you want. You’re being too uptight and missing out on what life has to offer. Live a little.” For awhile that felt good, but as I’ve been listening to that voice, it doesn’t seem to offer me as much liberation as I thought it might. Living that way is just as exhausting and not any more life-giving than the alternative. Both voices are two ends of a spectrum. Both have something really good to say to me, but neither voice is me. Neither voice is Ellen – my core, my deepest self.

I think there’s something really attractive about falling to one end of a spectrum because it gives you something to define yourself by, whereas being in the middle leaves you in a state of balance that doesn’t have a name. That is a point of struggle for me. As I said at the beginning of this, naming is a critical part of growth for me: it allows me to learn and understand things more fully.

I’m starting to see though, that what I really desire is to know who I am – what my Self is. I’ve learned that I know my true Self best, not by a list of character traits, but by knowing that I have worth. We find our truest worth in the depth of connection we have with people – the feeling that we have meaning to others. This depth of connection comes from the ability to be yourself rather than a thing or a list of attributes or traits.

I think that is what I am learning here: It’s in those kinds of deep connections – connections where you know that you can be your worst self and the other person’s love for you and opinion of you won’t change – that I find value in myself and in life. Those connections are what make me feel at peace with who I am and give me a reason to get up every morning. 

Also...

So exciting.

Fire Breathing

We have a wood stove that heats our cabin and I really enjoy tending it. My favorite thing is when it goes out, but there are still enough embers that if you blow it just right, big flames suddenly leap up from the embers like a genie burst forth from his lamp. It makes a giant wooshing noise and I feel like a fire breather every time. I want to be a dragon when I grow up.

News Flash: I Am a Woman

Weirdly enough, I’ve been spending a huge amount of time thinking about that. And all things gender related. It’s largely been the focus of my thought in a lot of ways. I’ve been having a ton of conversations with people here: other students – both women AND men, professors, God. Anywho, we have to write these bi-weekly papers called “memos” and read them aloud to our book discussion group. I wrote one a few weeks ago on all of this stuff when I was just beginning to get all fired up about it. It explains some of my basic thoughts pretty well:

Feminism. Gross. That word makes me shudder inside. If feminism was a tangible object, I would probably run as far away from it as I could. For me, it brings to mind women who frequently bash men, but have raging sex lives. It looks like long flowy skirts, obsessions with earrings, and judgmental conversation. It conjures up images of women who flaunt their bodies, wear low-cut shirts and shape or shave off every hair on their body and say they should be free to do so, to express their femininity. But who designed that femininity? Do they really think they’re free?

I know this is not really what feminism is, but much like the church leaves a sour taste for some people, feminism doesn’t sit right with me. Thus, when we were invited to a women’s lunch this week, I inwardly rolled my eyes and prepared to bear an hour of irrelevant estrogen-filled nothingness.
 

Yet when I walked out of Nancy’s house at the end of that hour, I was pissed. Not with what was said, but with myself, because everything that was said in that living room was true about me. Everything. And up until Tuesday, I had been bullshitting myself into thinking that I was free from all problems gender-related. 

The topic of conversation was competition, but we talked about a lot of things. We talked about how almost everything we do is based on our desire to prove ourselves to men – in work, in school, in everything. Because of this, we give the words of men a lot more weight in our lives than the words of women. I know that for me, a compliment from ten girls is the equivalent of a compliment from one guy. Even if it’s my brother. I hate to admit that’s true, but it is.
 

We talked about dichotomies and how we’re always expected to fit one end of the spectrum – feminine or masculine, gay or straight, girly or tomboy. It’s not really okay to fall somewhere in the middle. Under the male gaze, we’re taught to step back, to be perpetually self-conscious about our ideas and our image, realizing that if we are too confident and free from that gaze, we may not be considered anymore. Affirmation from men becomes a source of worth and validation, and that worth seems to be a limited resource – something we have to compete for.

I left the conversation feeling really frustrated. I don’t even really know what it means to be feminine. It bugs me when guys offer to carry things for me. God gave me biceps. I can carry it myself, thank you very much. I don’t wear makeup. My long hair is gone and I only shave my legs when I feel like it. I like wrestling just as much as I like hugs. I really like soul-searching conversations and brokenness, but I also like burping and poop jokes. I have an extreme dislike for dresses and an even greater dislike for the fact that I have to wear one, along with eyeliner, before a guy will tell me I’m pretty.
 

I’m not really sure what to do with any of that. I don’t always fit with a dichotomy, and sometimes I feel like I lack an identity because of it. What does the world see me as? What do men see me as, and why do I care so much? I hate the way we’ve been socialized to understand gender roles. By society’s standards, I can’t partake in eating contests and be an emotional creature at the same time.

On a slightly different note, as I was thinking about all of this, I realized that men need to be part of this conversation – that maybe we shouldn’t be having a women’s group, but a gender-discussion group. Or at the very least, the guys need a place for conversation as well.

Often, when I have been at events (usually church youth group) where guys and girls split up to talk, all the guys ever came back having talked about was porn, masturbation, and sex. Those are important topics to discuss, I’m sure, but I cannot believe that guys are just shallow sex machines. And the struggle of male gender identity has to be more than just learning that you don’t have to be ripped or that it’s okay to cry.

When I lived in Camden, I realized my whiteness for the first time. It’s not a bad thing, and I had to learn not to be frustrated at myself for it, but regardless, there are important conversations that need to be had over what a white identity even is and what it means for living life alongside people that are not white. The same idea can be applied to being a male. Majorities often need to talk about their issues just as much as minorities do. It’s just that the majority has the privilege of not noticing that they have issues in the first place.

At any rate, I still really don’t like the word “feminism”. Who knows. Maybe I’ll learn to like it someday. But right now, I’m more concerned with simply learning to embrace the fact that I’m a woman, and exploring what that even means. And I want it to be a joint effort – men and women casting off socially-created gender roles to find something more real and life-giving and freeing.

Trees and Mountains

One of the biggest draws about the OE is that we go on a week-long backpacking trip as a break between our first and second class segments. We just got back from it and it was probably the biggest life-giving thing I’ve done in a long, long while. I can’t think of a time when I’ve felt more at home in my body – my mind acknowledging it, encouraging it, being thankful for it.

There were three different trip options – my group, 11 of us, went to the Cascades in central Oregon.  We climbed up dry waterfalls, hiked across snow and shale, bushwacked through marsh, forest, and woods decimated and turned beautifully white by forest fire, walked across blister-inducing sand, covered obsidian-laden ground, and passed through meadows filled with wild flowers, streams, crickets, and butterflies. We dug holes and pooped in them, shared formative life stories around campfires, showered in waterfalls, ate dried apricots and instant soup, gazed at the milky way, drank water from sources that we could actually see and touch, and ate snow-cones made out of Gatorade and age-old mountain snow.

I spent lots of time thinking about everything and an equal amount of time thinking about nothing – just being alive in the present moment. It was a beautiful break for my soul and an incredible adventure for my body. I wish this kind of thing upon everyone.

Oh yeah. And we may have taken a mooning picture on some mountain somewhere at some point.

CLIF Bars

Today I learned that the guy who invented cliff bars went to the OE (Oregon Extension – the program I’m doing right now). Sick, right?

Parasitic Magic

Did you know that 10% of all the world’s species are parasitic insects? Crazy, huh? 

And there are even some parasites that change the sex of their host while inside of them. 

Thank you Annie Dillard, for enlightening me. 

You should read her book, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. It’s actually not all about parasites. She talks a lot about the mystery of nature. My list of favorite quotes grew substantially after reading it.

The Mexican Fisherman

An American businessman was at the pier of a small coastal Mexican village when a small boat with just one fisherman docked. Inside the small boat were several large yellowfin tuna. The American complimented the Mexican on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took to catch them. 

The Mexican replied, “Only a little while, Senior.” 

The American then asked, “Why didn’t you stay out longer and catch more fish?”
The Mexican said he had enough to support his family’s immediate needs.

The American then asked, “But what do you do with the rest of your time?”

The Mexican fisherman said, “I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take siesta with my wife, Maria, and stroll into the village each evening where I sip wine and play guitar with my amigos. I have a full and busy life, Senior.”

The American scoffed, “I am a Harvard MBA and could help you. You should spend more time fishing and with the proceeds, buy a bigger boat. With the proceeds from the bigger boat, you could buy several boats. Eventually you would have a fleet of fishing boats. Instead of selling your catch to a middleman, you would sell directly to the processor, eventually opening your own cannery. You would control the product, processing, and distribution. You would need to leave this small coastal fishing village and move to Mexico City, then LA, and eventually NYC where you would run your expanding enterprise.”

The Mexican fisherman asked, “But Senior, how long will this all take?”

To which the American replied, “15-20 years.”

“But what then, Senior?”

The American laughed and said, “That’s the best part. When the time is right you would announce an IPO and sell your company stock to the public and become very rich. You would make millions.”

“Millions, Senior? Then what?”

The American said, “Then you would retire and move to a small coastal fishing village where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take siesta with your wife, and stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play your guitar with your amigos.”