wholeheartedness

I pulled this quote from a book a few Saturdays ago, and have been weighing it ever since.

The antidote to exhaustion may not be rest. It may be wholeheartedness.

Its completely counter-intuitive, and its the last thing I want someone to tell me on a low-day.  But... somehow its true (when authentically enacted). I never realize it beforehand, but sometimes I stand up and realize I feel better. The solution is wholeheartedness.

This week has been long and tedious. I've been working on installing internet, which although innocent sounding, is actually a Herculean task wherein beyond every solution lies two more problems. AND, people who have never had internet before now, have realized they will have internet as soon as I solve all the problems. So they come and bug me. Every day. Multiple times a day. (and interns were included in that, until I asked them to stop). Yesterday, I restored internet to two apartments, only to take it away from the family with the most computers. I could shoot something.
I may be perfectly competent to call customer service for hours on end, and I may be perfectly computer literate. I may have ALL the necessary skills. BUT IT DRAINS MY SOUL AWAY TO CARE SO MUCH ABOUT INSTALLING INTERNET FOR WEEKS ON END.

so, its Friday. This morning, I worked on internet. This afternoon I went to an appointment in Brampton with a family. I was gone for 5 hours. I came home and cooked fajitas for dinner. I was so tired.

I came up through the back driveway to my house. I was thinking about mowing our front lawn, but before I could get to it, I saw the little girl from the basement playing in the dirt. I called her to me, and showed her how she could pull out the little oak seedlings as she played. We made little tree bouquets together and then raced to put them in the green bin. After a while, she asked me "Christine, are you ever going to cut down that long grass up there?" and I said, "Yeah. I am. Let's do it right now."
So I went and grabbed some pruning shears to attack these plants that looked like they were going to be beautiful flowers, but ended up being flailing grassy leaves that are taking over our garden. I started chopping. The girl started helping me pull out the stocks.
Soon one of the ladies from the first floor came out. "What are you doing?? Is it garden club today? I was going to take a shower, but I saw you and I came out to see what is happening"
"No, its not garden club not exactly. But you can help us if you want!"
So the lady came down and started tugging out plants too.
A little while later the small girl's mom came out too.
Soon, a lady from another house came by, because her family had been playing in the parkette. I didn't see her at first, I just heard "Christine!!! Why you is no invite me for garden club!?!?!"
I responded "Well. It was an accident. There will be a real garden club soon, but this is just an accident. it started with just me and the girl, and then it just kept getting bigger...."
"Okay. Who cares. I help you."
So then we were four grown women, pulling out crazy strong plants. We got some pitchfork action going, got the roots out of some of them (more work to come, though). We planned a party for our house, thought up what seeds to use, talked about last year, talked about plants that grow in everyone's home countries. And as it got dark, we headed inside, and washed up.

And my heart feels so much better now.

Communicating where I am...

Excerpt from The Two Gretels by Robin Morgan

The two Gretels were exploring the forest.
Hansel was home,
sending up flares.

Sometimes one Gretel got afraid.
She said to the other Gretel,
"I think I'm afraid."
"Of course we are," Gretel replied.

Sometimes the other Gretel whispered,
with a shiver,
"You think we should turn back?"
To which her sister Gretel answered,
"We can't. We forgot the breadcrumbs."

So, they went forward
because
they simply couldn't imagine the way back.

http://andreaandluke.blogspot.com/2009/07/two-gretels-communion-liturgy-andrea.html

My roommate Katie shared this poem in her morning prayer on Thursday. The above link is from her country supervisor from last year, when she was living in Mexico as a YAGM volunteer. One of the things she offered in her reflection was the need to communicate clearly with your friends and family "Hansels" back at home.
We don't go home the same. And the only way home is forward. Even when people at home are sending up flares, or memories from ages past come haunt you, the only way forward is to imagine the new way. So communicate where you are now, and where it is you think you might possibly be going from here.

I am moving home to Fresno, but as an adult. The only way is forward. I'm not going to be the same that I was before I left, just like I wasn't the same when I came back from Whitworth, or home from South Africa. Its an ugly transition, you know, learning to live as your new self in an old familiar place.

And even though I dream of Fresno, of boys past, of fresh fruit, warmth and sunshine, I am older, I am stronger, I am freer. I have walked this far, and I will keep walking all my life. It is good to walk in the rain, in the sun, even in the snow sometimes. I don't know that my memory works well enough to serve as breadcrumbs, which is just as well.

 * * * * *
And where am I now?

My feelings in this forest are so varied, depending on the day. This week I have been so tired, so frustrated at a family, our administrator, the freaking patriarchy in this organization, and the effing Bell internet. This week I have been really happy, and really proud of myself, I mowed the lawn of my house, I installed internet in another, I did a creative morning reflection, I danced at our fundraiser, and I saw an incredible production of Midsummer Night's Dream. I've been connected with home, with news of an interview offer, EdD acceptence, wedding-scheduling talks. I've been planning a mini vacation to NYC too. I've spent good quality time with some residents of my house, I've fed a baby, I've welcomed another baby into the world. I've connected an illiterate woman with a skilled tutor. I've introduced ELL kids to Shakespeare, and they laughed at all the right parts.
I've thought about justice. about my life. about this world. about the oscillating relevancy of politics. about Canadian politics. about Pho and Thai tea. I tasted my first slurpee of the summer. and drank a dirty chai in the rain.

whoops. do you see how easy it is to slip from feelings to actions? let's try again.
This week, I've felt lonely. I've felt loved.
I've felt admired and condemned in a red dress.
I've felt pride and anger.
I even woke up in the morning asking why in the world I have gotten out of bed every other morning that I could remember. (eventually I convinced my half-asleep self that the reason one gets out of bed is to see what it is in the day that makes it worth it... and one won't ever know unless one gets out of bed to see)
I've felt drained and then filled.
I've felt far from home, and blessed to be here.
I've felt frustrated at others, and at myself.
I've felt thankful, and I've felt loved.

Its hard to say what it is I see in you.

The sun has finally come out in Toronto for THREE days in a row! AND they even happened on a weekend. I do better in sunshine. I love feeling tan, or at least a little bit darker.

My ankle is healing so much faster than I thought it would, but it still looks like a grandma with diabetes foot by the end of the day.

Here's a list of things that I find hard to do:

1. write honestly when I know people are actually reading what I say. That being said, I think its important that I don't post things I wouldn't want someone to read (which has happened, and exploded terribly all over the end of one summer, even though I still stand by what I said).
2. talk about feelings (especially ambiguous ones)
3. buy good gifts for my mom
4. get out of the house on a Sunday
5. e-mail friends of friends (even if the connection is already made)
6. get to church on a Sunday (especially alone)
7. talk through negative things, but stay optimistic about the big picture
8. engage with residents who are my companions on the weekend
9. take time for myself, and then return at full force
10. commit fully to the present here, when I know I'm leaving in a few months. 

but when the sun is shining, it so much easier to trust that it will all work out in the end. So much easier to realize I have so much more than enough here.

Today I spent mostly waiting for a doctor in various waiting rooms, because a thirteen year old companion of mine broke their foot playing soccer on Friday. Separately, I also had physiotherapy for my own ankle at the hospital we ended up in the emergency room of later. I got back from the hospital at 7pm (where at the end of the day, they had done nothing for this kid, except give us a 7am appointment the next morning in the Fracture Clinic). Then I ate a bit of dinner, and sat in the rooftop garden with two interns. We talked a bit, which is always therapeutic, but mostly we just WERE. Sitting with our faces towards the setting sun, together, and then my soul is replenished.

After they left, I weeded the garden a bit, and did some physio excercises on the trampoline up there. 

I am thankful to be here. It is good to be here. Even when I am exhausted and frustrated and really hungry in a waiting room. Even when residents are complete and total bitches to our faces or behind our backs. Even when nothing happens the way it was said in the morning meeting. 

It is good to live with people. It is not good to be alone.

It is good to hear a happy girl clapping and singing early in the morning. and to hear loud shouts of GOOOOOAAALLLL!!!

It is good to bike from house to house, and to connect people who need help with those who can provide it. Its even better to facilitate the beginning of friendships.

It is good to walk in your neighborhood, or local park, to nap in the grass, and to hear a young girl say to her mother "but mommy.... where are you going? its so BEAUtiful here...."

It is good to finally get exercise, to have your heart pump before your ankle throbs.

It is good to be single. To be free and open and perfectly complete. To have no worries of babies or pregnancy. 

It is good to be surrounded by interns. and then surrounded by adoptive aunties, mothers, sisters, friends. To trust and be trusted with each others lives, stories, children. 

(i who have died am alive again today,and this is the sun's birthday; this is the birthday of life and of love and wings: and of the gaygreat happening illimitably earth)
-ee cummings

"Go ahead and live your life.You might be surprised. The world might continue."-Gwendolyn Brooks

Blog of Lists

5 Beautiful Things I will take with me from the Catholic influence here

1. RETREATS! retreats are the best, and help everything. I've taken one personal retreat and two intern retreats. essential practice for the rest of my life.
2. greater appreciation for the Psalms, and their incredibly poetry. It amazes me a little bit how we can read the same Psalms every month and every so often a line or a few words will pop out at me in a totally new way
3. the Canticle of Zechariah (blessed are you God of Israel for you have visited and redeemed your people. and have raised up a horn of salvation in the house of your servant). what its all about. in a nutshell. 
4. ...appreciation of Jesuits... whoops. 
5. Mary Jo's steadiness of presence. Her whole-life commitment to Being With people.

4 Things I learned that I do

1. even with a good attitude, and awareness that others depend on my attention to detail, I still really don't like dishes
2. i'm not good at branching out and meeting total strangers in a new city. i think that I'd like to have multiple friend circles, but I don't actually make the effort to attend awkward things like book clubs or yoga classes at the library...
3. communicate well with people with limited to no english. (if they let it happen)... before I thought it was a skill that everyone who worked with refugees had... not so, i have discovered
4. i am utterly dependent on the internet for my sense of stability and place in the world. I stay up too late on the internet and then don't function in the mornings.... regularly.

5 bookmarks I depend on:

1. facebook
2. New America Media 
3. my google reader
4. Al Jazeera English
5. God's Politics blog

other places I want to try to be in the world:

1. Thailand/Laos*
2. Slovakia/Eastern Europe*
3. North Africa
4. East Africa
5. Amsterdam/anywhere in the Netherlands/Geneva/Brussels**
6. Turkey
7. Kerala
8. Forced Migration Studies department at Wits in South Africa. Also Cape Town**

 (**and/or attempt living in)

1 place that I daydream about regularly:

1. Fresno

94 days

I am tired. Its the time of year when I seem to get tired. I am so ready for the clouds to part and the sun to shine through. 

Mother Theresa says, do not think that love, in order to be genuine, has to be extraordinary. What we need is to love without getting tired.

I'm not quite sure how thats supposed to happen. 

Somehow when you/I/one first start a project, its so exciting. Meeting new people, learning a new system, trying and even failing. Slowly, it becomes easier, less overwhelming, until one day it is completely and entirely ordinary. People are people, who you know, and who know you. There aren't really surprises, because even if a new circumstance comes up, you already know how each person is going to respond, and who you need to call to sort it out. Some people complain about everything. Some people freak out like the world is ending (and always need some small crisis to be solved)... maybe so they can feel like they're making progress in the midst of the incredibly infuriating long wait. 

I live with people who are waiting to be heard. They are waiting for a hearing, so that they can learn if the government of Canada is willing to accept their story, and willing to let them stay in Canada. A family could wait two years for a hearing, then wait three months for a letter, (and if they're not accepted, wait a few weeks for the next last-chance application to try to stay). And if all that fails? They go back. They're deported. 

If it works however, these fragile (sometimes annoying) people can trust the world again. They can slowly become more fully human, more fully present. They can live, fully. not waiting any longer. 

I haven't figured out a good response yet, when someone asks me if they are going to be accepted or not. I tell them I don't know. Even though I have heard their story over coffee or jack daniels. Even though I have seen how their children can't sleep at night without nightmares. Even though I have watched them conquer so much in their time here. Even though I believe that every inch of their humanity is valid and wholly worthy of protection. I don't know if Canada is their new home, or if they'll be sent back.

I am tired of not knowing. I am tired of bearing stories and expecting them to not be accepted. The political climate of Canada is so conservative these days, and the refugee board that hears the cases is more and more highly politicized.

I work with a lot of Roma(ni) these days, gypsies (zigan/cegan) in common derogatory terms. I can't believe the shit that these kids have gone through in their schools. I can't believe the shit their parents went through, or their grandparents. (Did you know that the Roma were killed off alongside the Jews in the Holocaust? sometimes just gunned down in killing fields, as to not waste the resources expended by transporting them to gas chambers?). There's limited evidence that people bring with them of systemic discrimination. police brutality and roaming masked mobs. people marching and chanting "death to the criminals: the jews the gypsies and the homosexuals."

And yet, today I was reading al-Jazeera, and I saw an appealing picture. It was a face, vaguely Asian, but I didn't read the headline next to it. I clicked through to find a beautiful slideshow of Hmong faces in Vietnam. I listened to the first seven minutes of the accompanying documentary about the difficulties around infant mortality and cross-cultural understanding between the Hmong and Vietnamese. The Hmong are compassionately portrayed as misled pagans with disfunctional traditions. And yet, when I think of Hmong, I think of the incredible strength, vitality, flexibility and beauty of the diaspora community in Fresno and every US city I've spent much time in. And then I remember how silly it can be to box people in, by culture, by poverty, by any form of statistical expectation. I have agency. The people with whom I live have agency. The world is dynamic, just like the relationships I have here, just like the IRB. I can go ahead and live my life, the world just might continue. I can help in real ways, I can love in real ways, but in the end, I am just a small tiny piece of each child's whole life. Each adult who I talk with, or help with something, has agency over her/his life and family. I have a role to play, but it is not to decide.

We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that. This enables us to do something, and do it very well. It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way.... We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker. We are workers, not master builders, ministers, not messiahs. We are prophets of a future not our own    ~ prayer attributed to Oscar Romero. 

Example of Feeling Protestant

I've told a few people (including our Jesuit chaplain Jack, whoops) that being at Romero House has made me realize how Protestant I am... and furthermore how much I appreciate my Presbyterian (and *gasp of all gasps* evangelical) roots. For the litany of reasons, I would need another post, but the following event happened a few days ago, and it was the perfect example of how sometimes I get so confused because I don't get the signals, or don't understand whats going on, or what I'm supposed to do, because I'm SO not Catholic. It also demonstrates how I think that the ceremonies and traditions are more fluid than a strict liturgical calendar would let them be. (In fairness, I really appreciate a lot of things that I've learned about Catholic traditions and worldview and commitment to social justice, yet another unwritten post...)

On the Thursday before Good Friday, all the interns gathered for a special "Maundy Thursday" supper. We were apparently recreating the last supper, with unleavened naan and red wine... and chicken and red beets. Before we ate, however, we gathered in the intern common room for a washing of feet. Before the actual washing of feet, our director read a rather long reflection on this painting by Sieger Koder (but I didn't have my glasses, so I couldn't actually focus on the painting at all... )
Then she removed one shoe and sock, and our founder quietly poured water over her one foot and then wiped it off with a towel. Our director then washed/splashed one foot of the guy sitting next to her, who then splashed and wiped the foot of a girl who then solemnly splashed and wiped my foot. I continued the pattern, and on it went. (may i point out at no point in time were there any verbal instructions on what we were supposed to do)

Afterwards, I asked the intern next to me (who grew up Catholic, but no longer affiliates herself with that) "...so... is the one foot thing being considerate because I have a cast on one of my feet? or is it a catholic thing? or like for efficiency or something?"
she thought for a bit. "umm I don't know... i think the only other time I had my feet washed, it was only one foot too. it must be a Catholic thing, but I would ask MJ to be sure"

So over dinner, we ask our Indian intern about what its like in Kerala. He explains that the priest washes the feet of twelve selected members of the parish and then kisses them, and other traditions to which the Catholic members of our group nod and smile.

Coming from the most "evangelical" or perhaps being the most vocally noncatholic background,  our director asked me, "have you ever had your feet washed before". and I said "yeah, definitely, at like camps, or service retreats, but never in connection with the last supper", which I don't think was the expected answer.

and that right there kind of summarizes why I like coming from a tradition that is not so strictly traditionalist. We don't read the same thing on the same day every three years. We don't have (as many) specific rituals attached to specific days. We do things that feel right, that have a biblical base, when it makes sense for the context. My favorite memory of foot washing happened at a camp. After a long day of hiking towards the end of a week at camp, each cabin found a private location and the leader (me) started washing one of the girls feet. The other girls stood around her and gave positive examples of the girl who was being washed having been a servant leader throughout the week. The girl with two clean feet then washed the feet of the next girl. To me, that more wholly represents what John 13 says what Jesus wanted his disciples to do than a ritual where water is symbolically poured and no ones foot is actually cleaned.

sidenote- i feel the same way about communion/eucharist: bread and wine were what was on the table, what was common when eating, not some sacred substance [although there are special foods for passover, i know. but we all do communion/eucharist monthly or weekly anyways, so we're already breaking from the direct text.... ] It didn't have to be led or blessed by some ordained person. i think what jesus was saying was, when you eat together in community, think of me. i am there too....
Hence, i've had communion with a limited number of skittles shared gracefully, and also with tortillas and cranberry juice. neither time was anyone ordained saying any fancy words. but i'll attest and those kids did too, that the holy spirit was there in the middle of that. even with the closest priest miles away.

PS: After dinner, I asked our director about the one-foot thing, and she laughed and told me that it was simply out of consideration of me only having one foot available. which is sweet. but then i asked another intern, and he said that he's seen both.
so i still don't get it....

Voice of the Day: T.S. Eliot

04-19-2011

“In order to arrive at what you do not know 

You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance.

In order to possess what you do not possess

You must go by the way of dispossession. 

In order to arrive at what you are not

You must go through the way in which you are not.

And what you do not know is the only thing you know

And what you own is what you do not own

And where you are is where you are not.”

- T.S. Eliot, from his poem “East Coker”

Verse of the Day: Love in Truth and Action

02-11-2011

"Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action."

- 1 John 3:18

Voice of the Day: Enuma Okoro

02-03-2011

“And the work of God is rarely dull, but it’s not always necessarily what we think. Transformation is hard stuff. Seeking to bring about the kingdom of God — caring for the poor, feeding the hungry, visiting prisoners, caring for the sick, renouncing demons in God’s name — you don’t do that in a 15-minute lunch break.”

- Enuma Okoro