Happy Birthday!

Okay I confess. I actually don't know anyone who has a birthday today. But I wish I did, so I could throw them a killer party at which we would do whatever sorts of things a person a quarter of their age would enjoy doing.
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Guess what?! I just found out that I lied! Sometimes being wrong is great. My Oregon professor's 8 year old son is a leap year baby. He's really great at being a ninja. And breakdancing. And pretty much beating up anyone that provokes him.

Swiss Cheese

I just saw the craters on the moon. With my own eyes (possibly aided by a telescope). SO. MAGICAL. Today is a good day.

God

by Amy Leach

           The hoopoe and the bat do not say this word. Neither do the eagles or the vultures or the black vultures. The hyena and the wild goat and the night creatures refrain from using it, too. I have found stoats busy in the gutters, doing what they wish, but never uttering this word. A ferret may slip off one's lap, stalk away along the floorboard with a bend in his back, crush under the back door and leave. Outside int he dark, nobody knows for certain what escaped ferrets do, but they've never been heard saying the word, or even forming it silently with their mouths.
           The people say the word repeatedly, and the more they repeat it, the less I can understand it: listening to words I do not understand is like swallowing stones. With each repetition of the word it is like I am given another stone to swallow. I can't keep up, for it is hard to swallow stones and I get behind. I have stones filling my mouth and stones in my lap, and stones falling out of my pockets, and the stones keep coming heavy and hard.
           The word refers to someone no one has ever seen. Perhaps this is why people say it over and over, as if repetition of a word can make up for the absence of its referent. They say it pleases him, to say his name incessantly -- they sing it in songs and chant it together and broadcast it loudly on the radio, on signs. Perhaps it pleases him. I do not know. It does not please me.
           Some evenings as I sit there with all these stony words piling up on me, I get so overwhelmed that I become indifferent, and I spit the stones out and let the heap on my lap fall to the floor, and I walk away and go out the back door. The escaped ferrets are out there. The hoopoe and the bat are out there, and I listen to them, and I drop into the pond and swim with the black eels, and I listen to the eels. I listen to the jackrabbits and the javelinas and the sandhill cranes, for they are all out there. And so is he to whom the over-uttered word refers. He is there because his words are there.
           His words do not rain down like rocks on those he speaks to, but they mount up with wings or leap through brambles or swim blackly in ponds. They sleep hanging from trees, stomachs full of hunted insects, or grow tall and imperious and leafy in the forest. Many, if not most, of his words hope never to be heard -- rooting blindly through their dirt-homes or proliferating on the tops of mountains, they are dismayed when they are discovered, and rush away. His words are not repetitive: the only thing his words have in common with each other is that they are strange and they are themselves -- they move on their own, through gutters and caves and swamps and the sky, and some of his words, when they get tired of hearing his name over and over, and wish to hear him speak, escape out the back door, like ferrets, like me.

I Give You Back

by Joy Harjo

I release you, my beautiful and terrible 
fear. I release you. Bu you were my beloved 
and hated twin, but now, I don't know you 
as myself. I release you with all the 
pain I would know at the death of 
my children.

You are not my blood anymore.

I give you back to the soldiers
who burned down my home, beheaded my children, 
raped and sodomized my brothers and sisters.
I give you back to those who stole the
food from our plates when we were starving.

I release you, fear, because you hold
these scenes in front of me and I was born
with eyes that can never close.

I release you
I release you
I release you
I release you

I am not afraid to be angry.
I am not afraid to rejoice.
I am not afraid to be black.
I am not afraid to be white.
I am not afraid to be hungry.
I am not afraid to be full.
I am not afraid to be hated. 
I am not afraid to be loved.

to be loved, to be loved, fear.

Oh, you have choked me, but I gave you the leash. 
You have gutted me but I gave you the knife.
You have devoured me, but I laid myself across the fire.

I take myself back, fear. 
You are not my shadow any longer. 
I won't hold you in my hands.
You can't live in my eyes, my ears, my voice
my belly, or in my heart my heart
my heart    my heart

But come here, fear
I am alive and you are so afraid
                                                           of dying.

Cynicism

"Cynicism oppresses the soul" --Leroy Barber

The last several weeks have been pretty deadening. Here's to treading on a new path that leads toward things that are more alive.

Whelmed

If being overwhelmed is when you are experiencing too much and being underwhelmed is when you are not experiencing enough, when we're feeling really balanced and good about life, can we just say we are whelmed?

The Wolf

"I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep. So when he sees the wolf coming, he abandons the sheep and runs away. Then the wolf attacks the flock and scatters it. The man runs away because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep."

-John 10:11-13

I'm auditing a class with Tony Campolo this semester, which has been awesome, because all he does for 2 1/2 hours is tell stories, which is great because I love stories more than just about anything in the world. And Tony, in all his scandalous charismatic messiness, has quite a few to tell.

I wanted to share one from tonight:

Tony started out talking about Fidel Castro, how he came into power and the point when he made Cuba a communist nation. At the time, Castro sent away a great deal of religious leaders, declaring the nation to be atheist. But there was a large group of pastors that he gathered together. In more words or less, he told them "look, I am making this an atheistic communist nation, so I'd really like you to leave. But, it's also a democratic communist nation, so if you want to stay, you may, but just know... if you stay, I am going to make your lives miserable."

Despite Castro's warning, many of the pastors stayed, and he did, indeed make their lives miserable. One of his tactics was to have them loaded up in the back of a pickup truck and brought to sugar cane fields, where they were made to harvest the crops for long hours. Now, sugar cane was harvested with machetes, and as one was cutting, the machete ultimately drove into the leg of the harvester multiple times during the day. These pastors would go into the fields, day after day, and come out, legs and hands all bloodied.

As time went on, some of the pastors began to leave, and the jobs of others grew harder. Now, on top of their work in the fields, they each had 5 or 6 churches to preach at, 5 or 6 congregations to care for, impossible numbers of people to visit. The number of pastors continued to dwindle until only about 25-30% of them were left. These were the ones that kept on and stayed, despite the oppression that was guaranteed them as a result of that choice. They pressed on, cutting down sugar cane, cutting up their legs, and serving their people.

This was the historical background we were given before Tony casually told us that somehow, several years ago, he managed to land himself a lengthy phone interview with Castro. As they were talking about all sorts of political and churchy things, their conversation turned to something like this:

Fidel: "Tony, tell me I am the wolf." 
Tony: "Uh, alright. Yeah, Fidel. You are the wolf." 
Fidel: "Yes. I am the wolf. You know, Jesus told a story to the Pharisees about the difference between shepherds and hirelings. The hirelings were the ones that fled because they did not care for the sheep like their own. But the shepherds were the ones that loved the sheep so much, they stayed and gave themselves in defense. I am the wolf. I came, I made hell, and the hirelings fled. But the shepherds stayed."

Then Fidel told Tony that the shepherds -- the pastors who had endured -- are what motivated him to change the constitution. Though it has separation of church and state, Christianity is now flourishing in Cuba.

I'm not entirely sure yet why I like this story so much, but I do.

On a different note, I also learned that the Roman Empire really came to be merely because the Roman men drank their wine out of the wrong cups. Excellent story. But alas, I have to go read my riveting astronomy textbook, so that one will have to wait for another day. 

The Civil Wars

I can't get over how much I love this song.

Insight Trips

That's what I think all short-term missions trips should be called.

Sectarianism

This was probably something I needed to be reminded of. And by probably I mean definitely.

Falling Snow

One thing I like about falling snow is that it is not coercive or demanding. Instead, it is silent and full of mystery. Except not the suspenseful kind of mystery that leaves you unsettled. Each individual snowflake carries with it its own distinctive story of wonder.

Also, a snowflake is not particular about the kind of person it befriends. Everyone's eyelashes are beautiful enough to kiss.

More Happies

To remind myself that life isn't all anxiety and stress:

1.) Yesterday I got my first-ever free drink from Eastern's cafe just because a certain human being named Ian is an amazing barista.

2.) (Also) yesterday, my friend that used to tense up every muscle in her body when I even touched her on the shoulder rubbed my back for practically 10 whole seconds. Yay physical touch! I was so honored.

3.) This morning I sat in the planetarium for an hour and felt 10x less anxious than I have for the past 2 days.

4.) Two of my professors from Oregon are here recruiting. It's surreal. And wonderful. And a much welcomed teensie smidgen of escapism.

5.) Oregon Extension recruiting = free Clif Bars. =P

Enough Time

"Everything changed the day she figured out there was exactly enough time for the important things in her life." --Brian Andreas

I still believe this to be true, but what do you do when you feel stuck doing so much of the unimportant stuff? Does mature adulthood call for you to just suck it up and deal? If that's the case, I don't really want a part in mature adulthood.

Mambo #5

So periodically in Oregon we wrote these things called Memos. I posted a few of them while I was there. A bunch of us decided to keep writing memos after we left and share them with each other. I wrote one this weekend and figured I'd post it since it sheds light on a few of my thoughts on being back at school. Apologies for always being so opinionated and dramatic on here. I guess this blog kind of gives me an outlet for my voice where I don't have to filter it quite as much as I do in other places. As for the title of this particular blog, this is my fifth memo and I always thought about how memo #5 and mambo #5 sounded really similar. For some reason I never failed to find this slightly humorous. So, without further ado, mambo #5...

One thing I’ve been in the process of learning for the past 3 years is to be a creature of the present moment. Last August, people asked me if I was excited to be going to Oregon and if I was honest, I answered that I was pretty invested in and present to where I was at the moment; spending a lot of time thinking about where I was going to be wasn't doing anything for the place I was right then. When the OE was ending in December, I asked (in my last memo) for everyone to be as present as they could be right up until the end, and I tried to do the same.

Now it’s February and I’m back in Philly at school. This is where I am, and if I learned nothing else from my transition from Mission Year into college, it’s that pining for the return of the past doesn’t bring it back. It only pulls you away from the one place that you have the opportunity to be at the present.

That being said, there are plenty of times I tell people I wish I was back in Oregon – back under the stars, back stoking Cabin 9’s wood stove and talking with people I love, back baptizing our absurd family of chickens with a cascade of rancid compost raining down on their feathered heads. It’s easy to wish all of that back. And I do miss it terribly. But I don’t think my heart is really asking for the Oregon Extension to return. I mean, I know it won’t, and I’m not holding out and refusing to make my home here on the chance that some miraculous opportunity to pack up and go back will arise. Still, there’s a large part of me that is reluctant to settle in where I am. The fact is, I don’t want to be content here.

The things that make me discontented are things that I think should be making me discontented. I’ve been disenchanted with a lot of things lately: the bigness and unavoidably dehumanizing nature of our global economy, the Almighty God of so many theologies and churches that ultimately teaches people to hate themselves, the busyness of my typical American lifestyle that’s chock full of commitments and appointments and devoid of the time necessary for rest, self-reflection (or any kind of holistic thinking), and agenda-free conversation.

Currently, I feel trapped in an educational system that doesn’t give me space to really study the things that I most passionately want to study. College seems to be created to (a)cater to students who haven’t been given the opportunity to discover what they really want to learn about and (b)keep them off the job market for at least four years.

I could drop out and read a ton of books, have conversations with a diverse range of people, intern at a handful of places, and come out on the other end having learned (and actually retained) a lot more theoretical and applicable knowledge, but I would be lacking that important piece of paper I get for coming to this place and reading third-hand critiques of Marx and spending class time taking tests to make sure I’ve done my homework. (Apologies for the painful run-on sentences.)

I’m being a tad harsh right now. Actually, I feel like I’m harsh all the time. I go to meals in the dining hall and look at the food, the catering corporation and the garbage cans with sadness, knowing it’s possible for people to tend their own gardens, buy locally from farmers they actually know, and compost more than what they throw away. I see majority white students on campus, observe the Black and Asian ones hanging out in mono-colored groups, cross paths with outcast gay students, and think wistfully of places where I know that color, age, sex, and orientation are better integrated, and all the better for it. I’m hyper-sensitive to the things people say that rub up against the new thoughts I have about God, and every time, I see how the ideas they hold so tightly to are wounding them just like they wounded me.

In response to all of these things that make me feel sad and frustrated and unalive, I’m a mad dreamer – and an optimistic one at that. I desire racial justice and gender justice and food justice; locality, less busyness, and more authentic, life-giving interaction; jobs that actually enhance self-worth, creativity and community-life. I dream of ways that these things could look and ways that I could actualize them with my own future, but at each stage of my dreaming I run up against walls that leave me feeling defeated and uncertain.

All of that to say, I don’t want to nestle down into Eastern’s happy structure too comfortably. Not having enough time to hold and ponder the things I feel most strongly about sets me on a continuous wave that crests in optimism and crashes down into pessimism, over and over again, and it feels like all I’m capable of portraying to the people around me is how bi-polar, dramatic and cynical I am. I’m kind of waffling around, trying to figure out where the balancing point between idealism and reality lies.

So currently, I am an overwhelmed college student, holding onto a lot of relatively new (to me) and not-very-popular ideas with pretty tightly clenched fists, afraid of what will happen if I open my hands. Opening my hands seems to be the only way that I can be present here, though. So I guess I’m trying to figure out how to do that, without betraying the things I’ve been feeling and thinking and experiencing lately. It’s a process, but a good one, I think.

Forgiving

I've noticed that I tend to speak and write a lot more unforgivingly than I feel. I wonder why I do that...

Hump Day Happies

1. Auditing classes

2. The guy that just walked past my window at work wearing a 2 foot cone shaped cardboard hat.

3. The thought that maybe, someday, I'll actually be able to hold a conversation with someone in Spanish

4. Sloppy joes for lunch

5. Knitting

6. Having a roommate that listens to me vent about things like God and how I think school is getting in the way of my education

7. The grandfather that called in at work and wanted to know how to deliver flowers to his granddaughter for Valentine's day

8. When Ellie tries to tell a story and laugh at the same time (I sincerely wish I could clue in everyone that's clueless about this post.)

9. Being texted a random ridiculous fact on the hour for an entire day by your best friend who read your blog complaining about a lack of spontaneity in your life and decided to change that.

10. Memories that make you look like an idiot when you crack up at the thought of them.