Coming Back to Myself

Why does coming back to blogging always feel like a coming back to myself? And why do I come back to myself so infrequently?

I'm sitting in Emmaus at Casowasco by the fireplace right now because I started off the morning at home sitting on the kitchen floor losing my shit. My resolve to sabbath for the weekend was being completely overpowered by the demons in my head that were listing off all of the things I must accomplish and shaming me for thinking rest was the best use of my time. Adam suggested I come with him to New York for his fantasy football weekend and just do my own thing since home did not seem like a conducive place for resting. So here I am. 

These are some things I am grateful for right now:

1. Having a partner that advocates for me when I'm not advocating for myself. 

2. Literature. The power of stories as a respite and a source of life. 

3. Reminders that sometimes choosing to think about what will give me pleasure and choosing that thing is not an irresponsible life choice. 

4. Animal crackers, cookie dough, and hot apple cider. All three of which I bought at the grocery store this evening because they would bring me pleasure. (Though I would also like to remind my future self that after having a little bit of each I would have been happy with just one nostalgic snack rather than two.)

5. Yoga. Which also sometimes helps me come back to myself. Especially when I do it with friends. 

6. Solitude, silence, and fireplaces. Separately they're all great but having them together is even better. 

7. Poems. Reading them. And when I give myself permission, writing them. 

Here I am again

asking the same question.

If the better choice

is to sit at your feet,

how will all the work get done? 

But you do not argue
the importance of the work.

You just invite me to sit.

Fine.

Five minutes, I say. 

Then back to work.

My knees sink down 

into the gritty rug. 

That will need to be shaken out, I think.

The lines of dirt from your sandals 

are before my eyes,

Which reminds me that I will need to 

show you to the wash room.

Did I leave clean towels on your bed?

I always forget the towels.

It continues on like this,
being pulled magnetically
to all that must happen
before I'll be ready to be with you.

At some point I look up
to let you know I must move on

before I forget all the
very important things

and I notice for the first time

that you have been ready,

waiting for me all along.
And I could not even give you five minutes.

Here I am again

asking the same question.

If the better choice

is to get all the work done

how will I sit at your feet?

July Top 10

1. Scrambling up cathedral toward the summit of Katahdin in Maine

2. The feeling of jumping in the Kennebec river and being swept down the fast flowing waterway with my extended family (in a way that is not terrifying because there's also a raft that's flowing just as fast right nearby me). Also, I totally thought about not jumping in because I didn't want to get cold/wet, so another aspect of this that feels important to name and remember is that I never really regret jumping in and doing the things that I'm a little bit hesitant to do for lame reasons.

3. Organizing closets that haven't been organized for years

4. Going to work every day with Adam.

5. "Paradise by the Dashboard Lights" by Meatloaf (specifically, singing it to my 9-month old housemate Francis over breakfast)

6. Taking trains & going on adventures alone

7. The grey tank top I bought in Norway when my luggage was lost / being able to wear said tank top outside in the shade and not be cold

8. Teaching Francis how to return my eskimo kisses

9. Daydreaming about doing yard work (not necessarily actually doing it)

10. Things that help me be a better consumer (like black-owned business listings & The Better World Shopping Guide)

Top 10

Things Bringing Me Life These Days...

1. The sweet frothed milk left over at the bottom of a good latte

2. Writing/journaling/anything that allows me to engage more deeply with my interior life/the world and presses pause on my persistent drive to "do" and cross tasks off of a list

3. Any event where my students get to show off something they have worked hard at and feel proud of themselves (who knew this stuff could make a person tear up)

4. Creating a rhythm of intentionally planned times of rest

5. Community with other spiritual directors

6. "Quarter Chicken Dark" from the album Goat Rodeo Sessions (Chris Thile, Edgar Meyer, Stuart Duncan, & Yo-Yo Ma)

7. Plain chocolate ice cream

8. The feeling you feel at the start of the season when you think about all the potential things that can happen in summertime

9. Farmers Markets & local, beautiful ways people work together to help make taking care of the environment a joyful, natural thing

10. Watching humans do myriads of humany things

My Top 10

It's been roughly four years since I've posted. A lot has happened. I've been living in Camden for four years now. I got married. Bought a house that I've lived in with a variety of characters as part of an intentional Christian community. Work in a school across the street. Am training to be a spiritual director. Went to New Zealand and Europe (Finland, Germany, Norway) amongst some other places on this continent. I've done a lot of learning and growing, lamenting and hoping.

Lately I've been doing some casual "what is the meaning of it all" thinking. I live what many others consider to be a pretty counter-cultural life, but really it's pretty mundane and far from noble. Living in Camden has done a lot for me in terms of exercising my awareness of privilege and systemic injustice, but I don't know what, if anything, it has done for my neighbors. I look at the time I've spent here and while I increasingly care about Camden the more I spend time here, I have yet to fall in love with this place. We have no plans to leave, but in some ways it's deflating to feel like we've chosen some hard things and sacrifices that may not be achieving many of the goals we hoped to achieve.

Either way, Adam and I seem to be in a space in life where we are living as less vibrant versions of ourselves. I think we'll work that out, but as I figure out how to walk well through this season, I've been recalling times in my life where I felt more vibrant, and one thing that comes up is the use of this blog in college. I felt more in touch with creativity at that point in my life. There's something nice about a space where people can read my thoughts if they want to but mostly no one does. Kind of like a good camping spot that only a few people know about. I used to be able to write and be pretty sure that my friend Kevin would read and sometimes respond with an email containing some little ponderings in response. He has since died, and writing here makes me wish he was still able to respond, but also feels a bit cathartic and makes me feel a little closer. Miss you, K-Dizzle.

Anyway, I got a newsletter from an old artist friend and at the bottom of it was a Top 10 list of random things so that we could see what she's looking at, listening to, eating, thinking about, reading, etc. for a touch of insight into her art. That's what brought me back to this blog. I think that sort of thing is what this blog used to do for me and the sort of thing that helps me notice my life a bit more - to keep closer to consciousness the things that provide vibrancy, touch on my creativity, and draw me toward consolation/toward God.

Here's my Top 10:

1. Building campfires
2. Rainer Maria Rilke
3. Being inside in warm clothes after being outdoors in the rain for awhile.
4. Organizing; spreadsheets; creating systems that make things better
5. Sitting in a crowded bus with Adam laughing so hard we cry at the video of this dolphin body slamming a paddle boarder. 
6. Lavender syrup in lattes & the smell of hot apple cider
7. This quote by Thomas Merton:
   “There is a pervasive form of contemporary violence to which the idealist most easily succumbs: activism and overwork. The rush and pressure of modern life are a form, perhaps the most common form, of its innate violence. To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything, is to succumb to violence. The frenzy of our activism neutralizes our work for peace. It destroys our own inner capacity for peace. It destroys the fruitfulness of our own work, because it kills the root of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful.”
8. Memories of the Oregon Extension
9. Spiritual direction
10. Conversations that happen in long car rides alone with Adam 

Rocky

Came across an article that was written yesterday about Rocky, the puppet guy from church I wrote about in my last blog.

A hostage and a monkey

His name is Alan and he used to drive taxis in Britain. That is, until he went to Syria to use his driving skills to transport medical supplies and food to civilians who need it.

Then last December, when we were all in our separate churches singing advent hymns of peace and hope,  he was separated from his group of aid workers and taken hostage by the most lost, hurt, insecure and unloved-feeling souls in the world. We have been hearing them on the news by the name ISIS. Really, they’re just a tiny army built up by preying on people who are angry for their suffering, desperate to repay the world for their misery. Those are the people that are hiding Alan.  

They have beheaded many before him, and now they say he is next. 

His wife sends out a plea. He was just giving aid to innocent civilians, she says. Can’t you show mercy? Where is mercy? 

Alan. 

Where is he right now, and what must be thinking? Does he feel alone? Belligerent? Terrified? 

Where is mercy? 

***

Mercy showed up in church, of all places. I have come to rarely expect him there. It’s as if saying the word makes him run further from the pews and the robes and the 2 minute passings of peace in which we are supposed to find time and space to reconcile ourselves to one another before entering into worship. 

But he showed up last Sunday morning in Bingo, a monkey hand puppet that travels around with Rocky, a wild-eyed white man from Camden. Bingo stopped and talked in his excited little high pitched voice to elderly women, men in suits, babies, and Father Michael. 

“He wears that puppet all the time,” my housemate, Matt, leaned over and whispered to me. “He’s from Camden. Talked to some pretty rough guys with that thing. Last year he got jumped and his first monkey got torn up. But now he’s back at it with Bingo.”

I watched, curiously, as mercy’s head whirled around, looking for the ones that needed him most.

Oh Hey There, Camden

Well, I’ve been in Camden for two weeks. I’ve been planning for my return ever since I left five years ago and have been busy studying classism and racism and urban cultures of violence, going to conferences on community development, traveling abroad to beef up my Spanish skills – all with Camden in mind. There have been countless conversations with a whole slew of diverse people about the dreams and fears and questions that go along with the idea of coming back. Then there’s the nine months I spent roaming the planet, getting the adventure itch out of my system so that I could readily plant myself here and grow some roots.

I’ve been preparing to transplant myself into Camden for so long, and now I’m here and there is nothing spectacular or dazzling about it by any means. But it is good. 

I live in South Camden across the street from a liquor store (ours opens at 9am - earlier than any other liquor store in the city) and the closest house with people that actually live in it is a block away, so the neighbors I have had the most interactions with this far are the regulars at the liquor store and the crews that like to sit on our front stoop and deal drugs. They might be into some shady means of supporting themselves, but they help me back out of my driveway, offer to finish sweeping up the sidewalk when I come out with a broom, and let strangers know I’m “a Christian girl, not no prostitute!” so I can’t complain.

My housemates and community members have already established their rhythms of life, so I am kind of the odd fish, floundering around and wrestling with what being here should look like, and I’m sure all of my optimism and ideals seem cute to them.

And while the certified nursing assistant class I found downtown is probably the easiest class I’ve ever taken in my life, I’m learning a lot about how education can be done well for people who haven’t had the ability to finish high school or make it to college. I’m also learning a lot culturally. The class has adopted me as their pet white girl. Most of them are confused about why I want to be living in Camden and think it’s hilarious that I know more Spanish than some of the hispanic people in the class, but they’ve embraced me with open arms, love laughing at the inevitably ultra-white and middle class things I say and do, and have taken it upon themselves to teach me important things about living in the hood. I love them all already. And my street vocabulary is growing just as much as my medical vocabulary. To top it all off, I could really get used to wearing scrubs every day. 

The past few weeks have also brought with them a crash course on the great perks of adulthood, like car insurance and the processes and expenses that come with moving and attempting to be financially independent. My savings account keeps reminding me that it doesn’t like hanging out so dangerously close to empty, but I landed a job at a diner (that’s got a super diverse staff and is into healthy, local food!), so barring surprise expenses for the next few months, all should be well. And if not, my roommates and I have bets that a pair of friendly elderly twins that hang out in front of our house all day are loan sharks, so I could just support the local economy. ;)

At any rate, even though there is a part of my soul that longs to be in a place where I can see the beauty of the changing seasons, breathe in clean air and hike through mountains, my soul is overwhelmingly glad to be in this place. There’s so much growing to be done here. I’ve been challenged and humbled and tripped up already in just a few short weeks. I’ve had loads of opportunities to love God well, love people well, and love myself well, and am pumped for those opportunities to keep showing up so that I can get better at recognizing them and taking them. One of the best realizations I’ve had in the past few days is that unlike the past several years of my life where I’ve been jumping from one thing to the next, I have time here. Time to ease in, to build a balanced life, to grow relationships. I’m not leaving anytime soon. Which means that I can invite DaShawn (the grinning 13 year old that stops by multiple times a day) in to cook sometimes, and sometimes I can turn him away without feeling like I’ve thrown away a precious opportunity. I can have days where I’m really invested in others and days where I am tired and need to spend time alone to recharge. I think it’s going to be a challenge for me to stop letting the fear of not-enough-time have so much power over me, but I am comforted by the time that I have in Camden and look forward to learning how to thrive in this place.

Apoderamiento

My host family has two little dogs, Hanzi and Cookie. Early last week, Cookie got her period for the first time. I’m not sure if it was the smells or what, but two days later Hanzi discovered his crazy dog libido, and he hasn’t spent much time dismounted from Cookie’s back end since. Normally, I would find this mostly humorous, and at most, slightly annoying. But it’s been driving me crazy. I get really frustrated every time I see it happen. It’s like Hanzi knows the feminist in me is in captivity, and he’s standing on the other side of the bars, rubbing it in my face.

Okay, “captivity” is a very dramatic metaphor. But people have asked me what’s been the hardest thing to adapt to culturally, and for the most part, it hasn’t been hard at all from a cultural standpoint. But an answer landed in front of my face this week. Empowerment. I feel like there is such a lack of women’s empowerment here. 

But the catch is that this empowerment is incredibly elusive, so I can’t really tell if I’m justified in making this claim. 

Women have plenty of presence here. In the pharmacy my host family owns, there’s a pretty equal amount of men and women employed. Since I’ve been doing a lot of shopping for a wedding lately, I ended up in shoe stores where men were assisting me, and carpentry stores where women assisted me. Backpacking stores are pretty equally staffed, too. There are loads of women studying traditionally male professions and Argentina has a woman president. The problem is not that roles in society are inaccessible. 

I feel incredibly different here though. I know in the US, I care less about my image than the average woman. But here, the contrast between me and everyone else feels distinctly amplified. I walk by a lot of people every day and there is no one else wearing cargo shorts and old flip flops. No one else whose hair is still wet from showering. But I do find lots of long hair and high heels and mascara. Again, not different than the US. Just more of it. And less of me.

I was paying for something the other day, and before any words even came out of my mouth, the cashier asked me where I was from. I get this question a lot, but usually it comes after my terrible Spanish accent or lack of suitable vocabulary, so I attribute it to that. 

It amuses my host mom to point out how I am different than Argentine women. During one car ride, she brought up the way that every other women at their church dress and look, and explained that “our men” like it when we make the effort to look nice for them. It helps them to be proud of us and not be tempted to be with other women. I almost laughed out loud, but the sadness that this is a real thought lots of people live by stifled my laughter. If a woman doesn’t look good and their husband starts pursuing other women, this is in part her fault for not trying to look more pretty? Where is this duty in our wedding vows? How does any of that line up with love, faithfulness, and self-control?

Several men have told me that “women in Argentina just really like to dress nicely and spend time getting ready.” Do the women realize that the men don’t know it’s for them? Do the men ever wonder why the women are spending so much time on their appearance? Who are we doing this for? And why? I doubt anyone is intentional in their ignorance, but it seems like so few people are asking questions that need to be asked. 

It’s not that being interested in what you wear and how you look is wrong. Enjoying it isn’t the root of all evil. I know several incredibly empowered women who love to spend time on their wardrobe and the appearance they give off. They have reminded me that clothing and bodies can be sites of art and expression. For all of humanity’s existence, we have been expressing ourselves and our thoughts and beliefs through what we wear and how we present our bodies. Not inherently bad. We are embodied people.

Still. When it’s almost everyone in a culture operates one certain way, that seems more like indoctrination, not free thought. 

But I get caught here, because I am not from this culture. So I can’t say for sure what is closer to right and what is closer to wrong. I carry my own history into this history. 

I want to talk to people about it, but it’s hard, because I can’t easily approach the topic without coming across as offensive or ethnocentric. 

It seems like almost all the women here enjoy the roles they have. And I fear acting like a colonizer, coming in with my sociology degree from the US and weighing another culture’s amount of women empowerment against my concepts of beauty and gender as social constructions. 

Oppression is so much easier to discern when the oppressed know they are being oppressed and can validate that to you. Maybe nobody is being oppressed here. But I don’t really believe that when I say it. 

As I was eating lunch today, I watched my host mom’s face as she was laughing about something. It struck me how incredibly beautiful she looked in that moment. I wondered why it struck me just then. And then I realized she wasn’t wearing any makeup. How did we ever get to the point of thinking products make us more beautiful than laughter does?