in the realm of hungry ghosts

 My small act of insurrection this month is getting food stamps, which I qualify for, but is also a means of there being less government money for the insanity of the US military complex. And! Roy and I did our grocery shopping at Trader Joe's... (Brookster, in your honor I am devouring a box of Barbara's shredded oats which I'd forgotten about since HA.) Delicious nutritious Food Not bombs!

Community life is really hard. Some days I want to escape from being around everyone. When my superiority/ego/ideals rise to the surface... which is more often then I'd like... I am reminded of how a true community is not easy work. In order to create beauty in Chinatown we have to cultivate an atmosphere of contagious love (something like what must've been happening among 1st century Christians) but that love comes at a very high price-- all of us working on ourselves, building friendships where we learn to truly trust and sacrifice for each other. It requires incredible patience, and willingness to see people without holding on to my idea of them (or their motivations)-- allowing people to change not binding them to a version of their self. It requires noticing the constricting of my heart, the narrowing, enduring together, sharing (the material and immaterial things of life.) Love reaches past the tit-for-tat of reciprocity and asks for a life of dying to the self so love can be reborn over and over. How much am I actually committed to that? How invested in honesty, in learning to walk uncomfortably until the way becomes clearer am I? How willing am I to admit to failures, to take responsibility for my action, to not delegate the difficulties of communicating uneasy things off on others?

Today I went with Rick & Roy to the Buddhist Temple for Buddha's birthday.  The dharma talk was thought-provoking.  He talked about how difficult it is to be born in human form, but how the celebration of the birth reminds us how miraculous our own life is, that we are here to become human. There are six or seven realms in their cosmology (though its metaphorical)... something like hell, then the realm of the hungry ghosts, and animals, and titans/warriors, then humans, and heavenly... (the titans or warriors are people who by being obsessed with power are lacking full humanity or something like that) and the heavenly can also be negative in the sense of being so spirit-minded we sit in a content bliss while others suffer... but the uniqueness of being human, of a realm where is suffering and birthing-- is a beautiful thing-- the only realm where we can learn to be conscious and awakened. To often we live in the other realms, live hellishly, live as wandering, hungry ghosts, searching, live as warriors consumed with lust for power.  

Rick wrote a poem that I've been dwelling on that contains these lines... "You smile at me and say: Love is the sweetest of all paths! I turn on you a stern glance and ask: how much pain are you prepared to endure? ... we would rather crucify Love than walk this world under Love's burden of pain." Many days I do not desire Love at all. To follow Jesus is more difficult than any endeavor. Recently I have been asking myself how I can survive the stories I carry... how to be faithful to the vulnerability of others-- to remain open, to keep baring my heart to the moment... when that looks like talking to a 20-yr old pregnant heroin addict about parenting, or helping an ill and drunk woman clean shit off her shoes and scrubbing the bathroom floor while she tells me how she was molested for years of her childhood, or a woman showing me the scar that runs down her neck where a jealous boyfriend cut her? Love is a tricky thing-- accompanying myself and others through the different realms.

 There is a 'dharma gate' called "the intuitive tolerance of the complete incomprehensibility of all things." Yes. Yes.

"Where you invest your love is where you invest your life."

Life here is very full and there is always more to do. I've decided to make Thursdays blogging day because I usually start to write and then feel overwhelmed at all the things I'd like to talk about. Today, sitting in a community meeting with the Surviving Sisters of Soledad, the watch-commander, Franciscan workers, property holders, and other stakeholders in Chinatown I felt a twinge of ownership. Two months have passed here already and this place is sneakily entwining itself in my heart. 

I wrote to Larisa recently, "I think there is something unique about our situations of work as living in a community-- a quality of inseparability, wholeness, and exhaustiveness-- work feeding into living, living feeding into work. I've been going to zazen meditation most weekdays... there is this concept of 'practice' and whether you are meditating, eating, walking, etc. all form different aspects of your practice. That is how I feel about work here-- whether I am technically at work at  Dorothy's or on weekend, the people of Chinatown are my community."  Sometimes the inseparability is straining, but I think it's also exciting. I am not working for people, I am sharing my whole self. I celebrate and mourn with this community, I laugh and I hold people while they cry, I talk about relationships and de-escalation and violence and dreams and zodiac signs and prayer and histories. Today was the 2nd week of the newly formed Writers Group, we wrote about where we'd been and where we're going and a time we were afraid. "I am afraid every day of being vulnerable... but I believe its the only way to be fully human." 

The House of Peace is an incredible experiment. The Surviving Sisters of Soledad refills me (with hope and caffeine.) The women are organizing themselves, La Perla is the manifestation of their voices, their power-- and it is exciting. The beauty and pain lie so closely together. There are so many days I feel angry here-- especially at the system (but just as often at people and at myself for my expectations and short-sightedness.) Since I have been here there have been at least six cases of elderly people being released from the hospital and "dumped" at Dorothy's (via taxi from the hospital usually)-- there's no money for senior care/housing yet we can spend billions on 'national defense offense'. (But that is a rant for another day.) I've begun to do more advocacy and have been surprised by the situationally homeless (vs. the chronically homeless who often have experienced intense trauma and might have substance abuse or mental health issues.) A lot of people in this economy have lost their job, their car, their house and simply didn't have a network to fall back on. I am shocked by how some of these people are just like me, as I said to a friend, "I guess that just proves how I am still stepping out of my stereotypes of homelessness."

So many days I feel frustrated, confused, tired, happy, close to tears, isolated, part of something, stressed, peaceful, joyful, energized. The street community cares for each other and preys upon each other. The alley is full of people shooting up, arguing, fighting, sharing, watching out for each other. (I'm learning about non-dualities.) I went to hear Dolores Huerta (Co-Founder of the United Farm Workers) and wow-- what a life she has lived, the struggle of it-- "We will win if we do not quit." And the fight is long. And dark. And the end is unsure. Perhaps the greatest struggle of all is to retain hope. 

Tonight Natalie said, "Meg is a community organizer." And I felt excited for that to become true. I'm just beginning to learn for sure. 

Community Development in the US of A.

There's an exhaustive amount of questions and theory and living to dissect in my head. I miss sitting in Common Grounds and being able to discuss these issues.

Today a member of my community, a favorite of mine-- a 70yr. old man with bright blue eyes and weathered skin who I helped build a shelter for, gave me the first 20 pages of his biography to read. It's actually pretty well-written and fascinating. Moving here has shattered misconceptions I had about "the homeless" (and made me think about how often we use adjectives about people's situations to classify them versus returning to the fact of humanity. They are homeless people. Undocumented people. Migrant-worker people. Drug-using people. etc.). Many of my new friends are kind, smart, & strong-willed but for whatever reason (bad-decisions, bad habits, lack of ability to adapt, or lack of skills in stress/conflict management, social ability, etc.) have fallen out of what is defined as "normal" society. How do I accompany them in the unique struggles of their community and in their individual stories? It's frustrating to see people who are very capable and intelligent but lack the resources or social skills or coping abilities to function. I have been spending a lot of time thinking about "mutually liberating partnerships" and meaningful work. One exciting thing I'm working with is a woman's group, Bill-- a co-worker of mine and an amazing community organizer, has helped them establish a reading room and coffee shop micro-enterprise that is in the beginning stages but its amazing to see the women finding their voice and learning how to organize, communicate, and make their imagined futures a reality. 

[Excerpts from a letter to a friend] I've been thinking about land right's a lot. I think we hear about it as an issue in the third-world more with peasants or whatever but I've been surprised to see how it's an issue in the US too. In the coming weeks the police are planning a sweep of the homeless encampment where lots of my new friends live and we have a weekly community forum where someone asked, "where is there a place I am allowed to sleep?" The PD has said they don't want to criminalize homelessness, but it does in effect become criminalized where it is illegal to camp just about anywhere. I have been thinking about private property and how even "public" places forbid camping (or sleeping)... or with the Occupy Movement-- sleeping bags, lying down, etc. It seems like the system always benefits those who have property to protect and defend. 

Parallels that come to mind as I think of what you're doing and would love to hear your take on-- ownership/agency despite the potential of transitory. Your community faces violence, outbreaks of fighting or threatening. My community also faces violence, I've been to two memorial services in the past two weeks. They face intervention because they don't own their land. Some of my community has little investment in their surroundings besides trying to secure a place to sleep-- they are given disposable objects and get new donations rather than hold unto things (which is also understandable because it's hard to be homeless and have to lug things around but it can become a cycle.) So how have you worked on increasing ownership or desire to participate in your own community there? 

Oh.

Before I left Addie sent me these words of wisdom, "I don't know if they re-invent us as much as they re-arrange us. And breathe new things in to us. I worry (that using re-invent) might make you view all that is inside of you, all that has happened to you, your past, your history, your memory, your love and life... might make you miss how solid and true all of that will be forever. ... Those versions will only re-arrange, shift, transform, grow deeper and more honest."

That was a much truer picture I think. Now to be here, after so much time, I am overwhelmed (in a non-negative way) at all of the newness, the sensory overload of sorts. It will take me time to begin to explain in this blog but some beginning thoughts I've been processing.

What does it mean to treat someone with dignity? What does it look like to accompany others toward empowerment? How can we create an environment that helps give people agency, helps them search for meaning, and space to express themselves?

I am humbled by the beauty of the people I've been interacting with, both guests to Dorothy's Place & Kitchen, other volunteers, other companions, the board. This is a community that is dwelling in both brokeness and beauty. One board member said, "working with the poor is a unique way to experience our humanity." There is a quote on the wall of my home, "as long as we are in the world the love that unites us will bring us suffering by our very contact with one another, because love is the resetting of a body of broken bones."