What is church?

A conversation:


Me:  Yesterday really wearied my soul about the church. I feel disheartened that our churches are so disconnected with the mission of God (and/or overwhelmed with other concerns) that not one of the churches said... let me talk to my pastor, let me see if we have funds to help, I could call a friend, "are they hungry?" i could give them food, etc.  It just made me feel heartbroken and disappointed in some way

granted I only spoke with 10 churches but people were so short and dismissal

 A:  Yeah it is really sad. I guess it just is something that has changed in church culture. Before the church was the institution that took care of those people in need because they saw it as their mission and because there was no one else to do it. The government didnt reach out to those people. There werent non-profit organizations. The church was the non profit. Now that governments have taken on the task and non profits are in place provide services for those in need, I guess the culture or manifestation of church aid has changed dramatically.  As far as providing shelter and keeping clothes on hand are concerned. It is definitely no excuse for a church not to ask "What can we do?" or provide anything that they can

there are plenty of churches that rush to aid that way. But I suppose it is just not the majority. Which means we are in a really sad situation. I think my church growing up was more that way. They went and fed under the bridge every saturday. They had clothing drives and if someone came by they could find something for them or there was food in the kitchen that they would make for them. I blame it on watered down American Christianity.

 Me:  yeah, I feel like non-profits have let church culture off the hook in  way that is actually really detrimental to our mission of community, it actually cedes a lot of power from the church to demonstrate Christ ... I mean there are lots of models of Christian communities existing as spaces of mutual aid and resistance... I've just been thinking a lot lately about the simple way, worship as activism, a church that is planted in a place and is a community center...like reading Dorothy Day's book about the catholic worker (and the place I worked too-- which was set up to be like that)... it was just like, if someone with need shows up, we pitch in to do what we can- and the simple way community in philly operated the same way, occupying an old empty church building and refusing to empty it.

Me: I know there are places doing the work, I just feel betrayed by what Christianity can look like, like you said-- watered down/institutionalized church that kind of follows rules of what church does and doesn't exist simply asking "how would love be manifested in this situation?"

Jesus' life and teachings demand a response that if taken seriously would be radical... and I am still learning how to respond faithfully

 A:  It's true. I dont know when it happened or how it happened but  I think with the dissolution of true community, a consequence was the dissolution of the community church. I dont know which came first. I have actually never seen what you are describing before. Which is really sad.

We have like three churches on one block where I am from. there are churches on every corner. there was never just one that served a place but like bunches all over.

And my church was in like a baptist minsiters union so we did have connection to other churches but never the ones right next to you which is probably a product of denominational separation. I really dont know.

But like a church as a community center, I cant say that I can name one but where I am from, we dont really have communities to speak of  but that's beside the point, I think the problem is that American churches do not emphasize service as a means of serving God. He says time and time to take care of those in need. And we either ignore it, or just focus on evangelizing, or focus on working within the church, or simply focus on ourselves :/

 A:  Well I think Amazing Grace Church is an example of that. They are completely engaged in the McElderry Park Community. They provide services and resources for people in the neighborhood and I thihk they do an amazing job of being a service, community oriented, outreach as mission kind of church.

 Me:  yes to all the things you said- Amazing Grace is fantastic, they're what I'd call a community church, I should of called them. And New Song Ministries runs Martha's Place and an Arts center.

I think there are some churches doing their best. and Alex mentioned too how churches having lost their younger groups makes it so they have a lot less money to work with which is true. (ugh, money.)

There is a church where i went to school that was also a homeless drop-in center... and at church on Sunday there would be homeless folks, children, college students, community members and even cats and dogs

it was fantastic.

aerial poems (somewhere between Chicago and Baltimore)

To the Baltimore I do not yet love,

be patient with me

I dream of the beloved community
where power has been disturbed

and all are at the table

I dream too of the other places
I could be, of the desire to escape

your struggle, to ignore that

life and death are a day's currency

I dream of the forest, of an

already come, of the Black Panthers

and MLK and Dorothy Day and 

the names that I should know by 

now- the sparks of faith

and those whose histories are lost

who fought

to see an incarnation

of justice, of mercy, of love

Who yearned and grieved and toiled

and got up weary and went to bed weary

for a dream yet come

Baltimore, I do not want to belong

to you. I seed my heart to the 

free coast, to the garden, to 

the community I know.

I do not want to stay for you.

Don't be a place that roots me.

But I hear the Spirit speak- in

the voice of Andre... don't come and go,

You can't love a place like that

You can't serve if you do not 

see it is life and death

and he is right but I do 

not want to know

Eventually, one must come to rest.

I do not want you as a birthright.

I do not want a city as a home.

... must mix their blood & sweat

with the land.

Must be in place

to see the dream 

when all awake. 

"because the heart narrows as often as it opens."

It's been difficult for me this winter to find the space I need to process, or hold on to the time that I need for it in the face of so many possibilities to spend time learning or building new friendships. This weekend at the Forum for Theological Exploration conference for leaders in discernment, I felt like pieces of my identity were re-centered and reawakened.  Before I arrived, I read Mary Oliver's poem Red Bird and the particular line that is the title of this post laid on my heart all weekend calling me to grace.

I didn't know what to expect from the weekend but what I found was a space to enter into the beloved community and I am still surprised and moved by the incredibly reality of the covenant we made to each other. Despite the diversity of theology/tradition the space was safe and sacred-- which surely isn't my every day experience. The spirit of generosity wonder, hospitality, and listening was tangible. It was a space of encounter and conversations surfaced for me that I had been processing mostly in my own experience without others to discuss with-- especially around queerness and my role as an outsider to the community I work in. Both those topics are complex, so I am going to begin with an easier thing... this weekend reminded me that I need to write. 

Introduction to Incarceration 101

Last week, I had my first workshop in the correctional facility. In some ways it wasn't what I expected (I guess I expected prison to be super rough and for everyone to seem different than me... to look a certain way.)  Which was dumb, because they were all ordinary people with their own stories and context. The weirdest part was having to wait at doors with cameras watching, knowing that you're being watched and guided through by some invisible oversee-er-- it's almost like highschool except those mysterious locks and barbed wire fences... and when they want to they can make you wait, or forget about you, and you just have to wait and pass through the maze of doors-- it made me think of Palestinian's passing through checkpoints-- especially when inmates where not called off their blocks to come to the workshop and neither we nor they really have any power to change that, they just get there when they can.

They all seem like women I'd meet in any setting of my life. and then there's things like "I have nine years, plus time served." Nine years. It doesn't sink in. How could it in one day? I laugh with them, their hands popping into the air at once to ask questions about their cases (there is such an intense preoccupation with their individual dramas and case-- I guess all the time to lends itself to that-- so many of them have a sense that their judge or lawyer personally hates them or that they aren't being represented fairly.) Their hands pop up again- in response to how many are mothers, how many have kids under 18 (nearly all of them). "I lost visitation rights here. permanently. I won't have another visitor while i"m here." Again this doesn't sink in... how could it? No visitors for years?? I don't see their rooms, their day to day life, the violence and prison mentality, the power struggles... I do see the cameras, the "movement of hold", the doorless stalls in the bathroom.   I hear in their stories similarities to people I sat with at Dorothy's. People with trauma. People with substance abuse issues, people who are sick, people who made bad choices, people who resorted to violence... there are several women who blatantly have mental illness and have limited medication in prison (no narcotics)... all normal people. How did they get here? I guess I wasn't expecting them to be so normal-- daughters, sisters, mothers friends, lovers, caregivers... people who were nurses, one had a bachelor's degree-- though most of them got their GED in prison, come from situations of poverty... etc.  There is no clock and I forgot a watch so I felt anxious of time the whole first day... Sarah says she thinks it could be a mechanism of control to stretch the day, to make it endless or make it feel short. 

I looked at their faces-- some pretty, some tired, some older than they are, some younger... I look at the faces and I realize, I don't know a thing about it... about the path to prison or the path out? I walked through the front door easily.

"It took me thirty-years to learn to love myself, now isn't that ridiculous? Thirty-years." Some of them... of us... women... will we ever learn? Can we know how to knit ourselves back from trauma, sexual abuse, physical, emotional abuse or neglect or detachment, from lovers that trampled through our skin, from the way life never seemed to bend in their favor as their taught it can for some people, how some people have all the luck? 

I don't know how to be anti-racist. I don't know how to be a good feminist. I don't know how to work against these systems of oppression, of institutional racism, of unequal power, of trauma, of prison systems that don't rehabilitate or set people up for success... I don't know how to keep remembering that if you're white, you have to pay attention to your skin opening doors, unlocking opportunities, and to be actively supporting others.

Today a few of the women shared stories and participated in activities where they opened up and one broke down crying in an activity and couldn't go on...  and I thought about how strange it is that we can encounter someone we don't know at all and in offering them an opportunity to safely express their emotions -- so many people don't have that and are so eager for those moments of vulnerability. I think for me the best part of my work is just having genuine connections with other people, even if they're miniscule in the grand scheme of things... it just feels important to have interactions where I really acknowledge and pay attention to the humanity of another person. It was sobering and also hopeful-- because there are opportunities for them to find support and move on with their lives-- it felt good to be able to be part of giving them concrete links to what they need and just to listen, to put into their hands forms and contacts and resources.

September

Two weeks ago I began my time in Americorp by taking an oath to “get things done for America.” Probably the most nationalistic thing I’ve said in, er… ever? I’m used to thinking of the work I do as community building, used to thinking of helping people, anyone, never as work for a nation.

As an Americorp volunteer when I’m representing them I’m not allowed to endorse political parties, rally, support unions, etc. (things which, not surprisingly, I have to remind myself not to do).
I was sitting next to a Latina woman who works for a partner organization. She said that listening to the marginalized and helping make their voice heard—through voting or protest, whatever means necessary, is essential to the work. We talked about her experiences of sexism, of flipping the gender expectations—when people ask her to take notes, she decides to facilitate the meeting, when people suggest she go first to ‘soften the crowd’ she closes the deal, she suggests others whose gifts make sense, she speaks up. “When there’s a worthy rally I tell my volunteers… “Oh, you’re feeling sick today? ‘Wink, wink.’” She is one my new heroines.

Intersectionality. Gender. Race. Class. So many things flitting around my head in my new position. I am working for Alternative Directions, as a coordinator of resource workshops at a women's prison and coordinating a mentorship program for children of incarcerated parents.

Today I had coffee with one of the community organizers from my office—she told me how a Jewish man had been afraid to enter her black community but when she said she also had ignorance that led her to fear his community (and had experiences of unfriendliness, etc.) his immediate response was defensive and to blame her, devalue her experience or legitimacy of her fears. She pointed out it was the same fear he held. “People need to have conversations, to listen, people need to collaborate to learn from each other."

I was delighted to find my anxiousness of what the people volunteering with me (training but at different placement sights- ah confusing hierarchy of organizational affiliations)—proven wrong. There’s diversity—of race, gender, class, experiences, and to some extent age. I had worried that I’d be alone in my lens of power relations, gender, race, non-violence, international experience, etc.  but the spectrum is broad.

I’ve been reading a lot of Paul Kivel (Thank you, Jacob!) and thinking about what it means to be anti-racist in my work, who are my allies, how am I supporting others? Chris Parks dubbed it the Jacob Mack-boll lens—“THIS IS SO COOL! How can I be constantly involved in everything and support and network?" A lovely lens to have picked up.

There is so much to say already... highlights:

* Affirmation (AVP) Exercise with my Americorp Buddies

* The Baltimore Book Festival-- the radical pavillion, Chris Crass, hearing Azar Nafisi speak
* Local Natives concert with my Chilean cs friend, Juan.
* Exploring the city when Brookster visited
* Murals all over Baltimore

* The kids I am working with

* Sharing an office with Sarah.

* Sharing a house with Claire.

* Sharing a state with Jess Sarriot & Emily Harnish. <3 p="">

* Visiting Harrisonburg 

I need to write more often, so I will try too.

For a New Beginning

Today I remembered a line from a poem that one of my friends & fellow 'Companions of the Way' sent me from our intentional community in California with as a blessing. Today it came to mind as so many of you, dear ones (& myself) are in moments of transition:

                                        'For a New Beginning' | John O'Donohue

In out of the way places of the heart
Where your thoughts never think to wander
This beginning has been quietly forming
Waiting until you were ready to emerge.

For a long time it has watched your desire
Feeling the emptiness grow inside you
Noticing how you willed yourself on
Still unable to leave what you had outgrown.

It watched you play with the seduction of safety
And the grey promises that sameness whispered
Heard the waves of turmoil rise and relent
Wondered would you always live like this.

Then the delight, when your courage kindled,
And out you stepped onto new ground,
Your eyes young again with energy and dream
A path of plenitude opening before you.

Though your destination is not clear
You can trust the promise of this opening;
Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning
That is one with your life’s desire.

Awaken your spirit to adventure
Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk
Soon you will be home in a new rhythm
For your soul senses the world that awaits you.

Family

We pulled into the parking lot of a park in Ohio and got out nervously. I played with the hem of my dress, lingering so my mom would reach the hall and sign-in table before me. As she approached the table she realized who the middle aged twins were. "I played with you when we were young! You two are the only people I know here!" She exclaimed with relief as they recognized her as Charlie Papp's daughter and came to hug us. I know my grandfather through stories-- that they called him 'twinkle-toes', that he was the life of parties, that my mom and her sisters went to weddings when they were young where there were still Hungarian folk dances, that he was "from the wrong side of the tracks" literally, that he swore in Magyar, laughed easily, ran an radio shop where my mom worked for him for the summers.
       A dark-haired lady came out of the hall and embraced me, "You must be Meg! It is so good to finally meet you." We'd been exchanging photos and stories on the website since she located our family in her ancestor search-- she immigrated to the US as a child during the Hungarian revolution of the 50s. Suddenly I was pulled into a room of strangers-- relatives, family... kin-- pouring over old photos, connections being made for me, stories being told-- about Hungary, about my great-grandfather and grandfather, about the family's immigrations, Ohio, Portage Lake. I met 2nd cousins in their 80s who I've known of by childhood pictures. We ate sausage, pickled peppers, apple strudel. A relative living in Turkey invited me to come stay with her.  One older relative, Vaughn, couldn't speak but wrote out stories on a flip-pad of paper for my Mom and I. Earlier my mom and I visited my grandmother's oldest friend-- they had known each other since kindergarten. She pulled out her wedding album and my grandparents, in their 20s, smiled out at me.
     Belonging always overwhelms me-- like collapsing into a raft after having tread water for hours-- there is a sense of relief in coming to rest, of being part of something.  

     Home. I am never quite sure of what that word means, like love, it's used commonly and to express the deepest sense of intimacy and connection. My definition stretches from coast-to-coast, arcs off to foreign countries-- for the geography but more often for the people-- the connections by blood and the connections by experience. There are so many sources of family, of belonging-- some chosen, some inherited and I knit my sense of home around these hearts that move in and out of my life. I think of the tattoo of sketched roots around my arms-- remembering that these connections are wild, fleeting, grounded, dumb-blind luck, and the hardest, messiest sort of work... love. 

     

Home.

"And I am struck once again by the unutterable beauty, terror, and strangeness of everything we think we know."
-Edward Abbey

I walked across the backyard barefoot to sit under this bush that's grown into a tree. My grandma and mother used to sit here mornings and drink coffee together. This morning the wind rushes through the leaves of the tulip tree stirring a gathering hush, hush. On my way to the glider I peeked between the thick squash leaves and spotted survivors of my lazy gardening and felt proud (for the little help I offered the magic that seeds unfold and grow into food.) The summer has settled into itself-- rich, full, slow-- and lent me grace to wait for the slow lessons of ordinary life. I grasp the strands of my dreams as they slip out of memory and realize I am less anxious, less afraid of this year-- of remaining in one place, especially this hometown that has always felt more like a launch pad then a resting space. Does it matter? Does your birthplace have to become a home at some point? Probably not. But, there is a quiet sense of calm in me-- that this is right, that I have much to learn from this place, from my family, from the way the past is never quite finished with us.

Earlier today I read a piece from Vela about a year spent in Mongolia and wondered along with the author at these worlds I carry along inside me:

 Mongolia changed everything – how I live, how I see the world, how I see myself. When you travel, you tend to cultivate a persona different from that of your everyday life... I remember thinking: one, what if I lived with the same persona I traveled with, and two, if I could manage here by planning only one step ahead instead of ten, instead of trying to see the whole road – well, couldn’t I manage my life like that too?
...It makes me think that perhaps, my facility with the language had less to do with having a “good ear” and more to do with being so open: without buffers, so that everything around me in Mongolia came right on in. Did I go there without buffers or did the buffers disappear when I arrived? Is it the place that opens the traveler or the traveler who opens because she is traveling to that place?

This year I'll be working for Alternative Directions, helping run a mentorship program for children of incarcerated parents and facilitating re-entry workshops at the women's prison.  I am full of anticipation for this fall, for the newness and oldness of this place... (especially to move past being 17 years old when I am here.) I feel hopeful. I want to continue experiencing this place with the magic of a traveler, with buffers down, full of curiosity, risk, listening, and patience for myself and others.

Lari articulated wonderfully a tension I have been living this summer-- the struggle of feeling like an injustice-tour-guide, the way church has flooded me with positive and negative emotions, the constant awareness of white privilege, the wondering at when I can offer my voice-- "if we are too politically correct at the expense of our relationships, we will never do anything for fear of the bias we will bring up.  So I'm glad to be conscious, but am so glad that that is a result of living with people and reflecting on that, and want that to keep being the case- that my reflections come from real experience with real people, and that I can be in work, living, and social settings where I can ask my friends- what does this mean to you?  as opposed to making my own judgment."

My mind is on a handful of thoughts-- changing with people even when paths diverge, relationships, what it means to work in my context, new communities, what it means to make commitments to my friends/to place, navigating desire, navigating my hyphenated identity, prayer, ¿Quién es Diosito? I am thankful for the thoughtful questions my friends are always asking-- questions that help me understand myself and who they are in their own mapped territories, questions that narrow, widen, or focus our scope and questions that hack through brush to open up uncharted lands... so many questions to live into continually!

Who we are instead

My yoga routine this morning included a meditation on "if my heart were planted what would it grow?" I imagined sprouts of hot air balloons taking to the air like dandelion seeds.

The house is quiet, another afternoon spent alone at home and I fill my time with collages, letters, and books. Words and images. When my head grows tired I stalk around the block, a few streets that feel more like part of my own backyard then a neighborhood I live in. Streets that are worn over in my memory with layers of people and conversations held while feet pounded against this pavement, the playground court, the swingsets. Lately we've been venturing into the thin band of woods while we weave our lives back together over and over, from everyday experiences.

I feel joy.

reminders

I am going so stir-crazy and its horrible because the more time I am at home just reading articles & books & watching shows-- the less I feel able to socialize or the will to do anything. I find myself wishing to throw myself into drama just to have a mobilizing factor. Sometimes I think we fall in love to escape our own boredom, to invent a story line for ourselves-- not that that lessens love, if just seems like we spend so much time waiting for something in our lives to be consuming, to matter. Does that make sense? For some people its religion, or a lover, or a cause. I guess we all want meaning in our life and sometimes it falls back into a just sort of existing state. I am not sure what I need to create in Baltimore, it freaks me out that I committed to staying here till next August. 14 months. What gives my life meaning here-- eventually I'll be working and giving a lot of time and energy to that... but, I don't want what I am doing to be the only defining thing. Yesterday I was at the library and this lady started talking to me-- just the smallest conversation but I could tell she wanted to talk to someone and it made me feel more alive too, to have a genuine interaction even though it wasn't deep, it was just kindness, just noticing another human being's significance in front of me. Lately in this funk I've been irritable towards my family and feeling less and less like talking to anyone- it seems energy consuming to create friendships... yet, I know that what gives me meaning is connection to others. It is so hard to keep seeing something worth exploring in any human that crosses my path. It's so easy to reduce people to an idea and dismiss them thinking I don't like that idea or "they won't get me" ... I want to be a person who lives with wide open arms, that welcomes in the stranger & the person I assume I will not like or be known by and learn how to dismantle myself for them, to see them, ask them questions. I am so miserable at that so often. I think that is a reason I have been missing Dorothy's Place (the day shelter) so much lately... because I was forced to connect to people I would never have imagined a connection too- forced to connect not over my ideals, politics, or fatih-- but just over being there, being present in that small crowded room, together, and knowing I was meeting another human- "a self that touches all edges."

rant.

Today I was excited to go to my first meet-kindred-spirits in Baltimore activity... a feminist reading group. After taking the metro, I arrived worried that I was 10min late and for some reason it was canceled this week. So feeling disappointed, I tried to get directions to a support Bradley Manning event and failed. (I always feel that any attempt at bravery should be met by an equal force of the universe extending goodwill to you, really!) But instead, I got back on the subway, and met a young man who gave me a tract/witnessed to me, then told me about how he was thinking of leaving his church because they support women in leadership and he wants to follow the true gospel. I felt like screaming, ARE YOU KIDDING ME!? and ranting about patriarchy. It seems so typical, boring, and infuriating that I have to hear these perspectives & be told that God and Biblical authority support his view.

It upsets me that his sincerity, as a new and excited Christian, is warped by culture and main stream Christianity to support oppression and sexism. It was the type of interaction that represents why I feel uncomfortable in church, why two weeks ago I wanted to write a letter about inclusive language to my church pastors. Because too many people grow up with this idea that God is male and that God wants males to be overseeing women. The young man expressed genuine belief that women are equal but "different", that they might even have more wisdom, it's just not God's way for them to be in authority. (bah!)

We ended up riding the metro together while I tried to listen, encourage him to consider other perspectives and asked questions, and wondered how to be authentic in the interchange --and it was actually a good interaction.

I've been letting myself feel angry lately, sitting with it and I think this is a good place to be in and explore it.

Now I am going to watch something fierce and eat chocolate. 

as spring begins

This afternoon my parents and I planted our garden.

Yesterday I was searching for apartments in the city and trying to fend of a rising swell of panic at the expenses and fear of being trapped in the exburbs.

I've been feeling contrary. I wore my End the Occupation shirt to my parents church this morning -- not out of solidarity as much as a statement of my worldly, moral superiority. The sermon began with a long golf analogy/story and I was already feeling distant from the speaker, until we all had to stand and read from Ephesians together-- about how Christ has broken down the dividing wall of hostility between us, which is a passage connected to so many pieces of me. As the speaker unpacked his own prejudice & pride, I wrestled with mine. Church is difficult for me. I light my candles at night and whisper my thoughts- addressing them to various names of God, read poetry & prayers (this week Adrienne Rich and Thomas Merton) & passages from scripture (unconsciously Genesis, Psalms, Isaiah, & Mark). I wish church felt more like those moments. I feel defensive at church, so aware of non-inclusive language, of a million Hes and Fathers batting at me, I feel defensive at the way my worship has been manipulated in the past, I feel angry at the politics and the lack of politics. I don't want to be there, and yet, there, I know it is a growing experience to try to listen, to try to be open to the sincere experience of others in worship and gathering, to be open to this tradition that is part of my story, to be open for the Spirit ("she is the spirit of wisdom & she is truth"- as Em wrote so beautifully.) Maybe that's the point-- if church is about worshiping, perhaps the truest thing I can do is go to church with my parents, wrestle and attempt to love my neighbor as myself in the midst of church. Love is worship. 

So, I put on my to-do list... write a letter to the pastors about inclusive language.

Speak. I tell myself this. I thought in church today, I need to speak to everyone like they are someone dear to me, that I can share my whole self with, not as much diplomatically as honestly.

There are so many things I need to give voice too & want to write about (especially instead of harboring these little seeds of resentment & pride- my own wall-mortar.) When I was in Harrisonburg I visited Shalom and teared-up with joy at the sense of belonging & struggle & beauty that gathering together can be. The message was also much needed and also about walls (maybe I don't like church because I'm always convicted? Which is probably why I should keep going.)

Being home is going to be a challenge. A dear friend and I have been talking about sunday-debriefing chats-- which might be much needed. Yes, I have been feeling a bit ornery and contrary lately, but maybe this is a good mood to sit with, to explore. I am happy and anxious and curious and many things about this stage.

Things I accomplished today:

Editing a few chapters of my mom's novel
Finally unpacking and setting up my altar
Building a raised bed for my garden (using a hand saw and power drill.- learning power tool skills from my dad.)
Cooking 'compost' stir-fry like Ellie
Reading 'History Will Absolve Me' and two of Fidel Castro's other speeches
Listening to lectures on postmoderism from coursera
Watching Game of Thrones & Downton Abbey 

color

Happy till it almost hurts.


&
it always begins a quiet day, the restlessness
then this:
(might as well do what I want while the summer's still mine.)
hair chalk: brilliant.

My body is not closed off:
so few my defenses
that the bare trees wound me
the sight of the pencil-thin wires
sketched in fast strokes over
the faster falling of light from
sky is its own type of pain:
                  the world is alive
                  all so raw
yet when I try to call you by name
all I can speak of is the shadow
under the brambles
a birds wing tracing its arc
along an invisible current
(I too feel the thing that
carries me, unseen)

These old brick homes cloth
themselves in ivy, white paint
another year fresh on the shutters
(I thought the word was shudders
for years, as a body should
learning to shut out a touch as
gentle as the afternoon light)
I can taste air pouring into my
body. She forgets each time how
naked skin can feel.
      
He never felt the Spirit move
as I did-- beneath a rain-full cloud
or in the handful of wind tossing
the lime buds of spring
                        and how could I
tell
him
why
       the crocus propping its stem
against the falling barn filled me
till the tears ran quietly over the
banks of my eyes, when he'd
forgotten that creeks, too, flood
in spring rains.
        

sprouts

I've returned to this house, this city, that I've never really possessed -- as a geography beyond the river & woods, the scattering of friends homes, and those old buildings I'd circled through that nothing leads me back to now.

It feel strange, to come to rest here without a plan to leave, to begin anew in a city that's familiar and still unknown. It's been seven years since I spent a spring here, walking in my neighborhood I'm amazed at the magnolia flowers dropping beneath the branches like pink snowfall, the bright lime buds, the perpetually cloudy grey skies.

I feel uncertain. Uncertain of my path here. Though I've lived almost four years with this idea: The untied knots can be redone... of 'a covenant with the land': eventually one must come home, one must come to rest and mix their blood and sweat with earth. I don't know how long this city will be home, but I am here.

I keep dreaming in a mixture of Spanish and English, missing my life in Guatemala. I wandered to the international food market, bought plantains and searched for masa. I'm not ready for the faces of my friends to retreat into memory, for their stories, our story, to settle. 

The floor of my bedroom is a half-finished unpacking I've abandoned momentarily for cooking, decorating cupcakes, making crafts, taking walks to pick spring bouquets, and reconnecting with the handful of dear friends I still know here.

I have so many questions of what "ordinary" life will be.

I've decided I don't want to leave

After 5-days of backpacking: La Torre: the highest non-volcanic point in Central America.

(and I convinced everyone to paint their faces.)

Quotes from Beyond Vietnam- Breaking the Silence by MLK... perhaps even more relevant now...

"And so, such thoughts take us beyond Vietnam, but not beyond our calling as sons of the living God.

In 1957, a sensitive American official overseas said that it seemed to him that our nation was on the wrong side of a world revolution. During the past ten years, we have seen emerge a pattern of suppression which has now justified the presence of U.S. military advisors in Venezuela. This need to maintain social stability for our investments accounts for the counterrevolutionary action of American forces in Guatemala. It tells why American helicopters are being used against guerrillas in Cambodia and why American napalm and Green Beret forces have already been active against rebels in Peru.

It is with such activity in mind that the words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Five years ago he said, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken, the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investments. I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin...we must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand, we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life's roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.

A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of South America and say, "This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just.

A true revolution of values will lay hand on the world order and say of war, "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing except a tragic death wish to prevent us from reordering our priorities so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.

 ... " This call for a worldwide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one's tribe, race, class, and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing -- embracing and unconditional love for all mankind. This oft misunderstood, this oft misinterpreted concept, so readily dismissed by the Nietzsches of the world as a weak and cowardly force, has now become an absolute necessity for the survival of man. When I speak of love I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I am not speaking of that force which is just emotional bosh. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality. This Hindu-Muslim-Christian-Jewish-Buddhist belief about ultimate -- ultimate reality is beautifully summed up in the first epistle of Saint John: "Let us love one another, for love is God. And every one that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is love." "If we love one another, God dwelleth in us and his love is perfected in us."⁴ Let us hope that this spirit will become the order of the day."

... "  We still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent coannihilation. We must move past indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak for peace in Vietnam and justice throughout the developing world, a world that borders on our doors. If we do not act, we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark, and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.

Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter, but beautiful, struggle for a new world. This is the calling of the sons of God, and our brothers wait eagerly for our response. Shall we say the odds are too great? Shall we tell them the struggle is too hard? Will our message be that the forces of American life militate against their arrival as full men, and we send our deepest regrets? Or will there be another message -- of longing, of hope, of solidarity with their yearnings, of commitment to their cause, whatever the cost? The choice is ours, and though we might prefer it otherwise, we must choose in this crucial moment of human history."

1.

Guatemala.

Good Friday.

It seems surreal that my time here is wrapping up. How do we ever encompass ourselves-- the people we have mirrored, smiles spreading over their faces at shared amusement? the stories we've been told in whispers, in raised voices, with eyes-tear-brimmed, downcast, starring into us? the stories we've used to articulate ourselves? talking ourselves and others in and out of euphoria and despair? the moments of exhaling between words, the moments of simply being present, of bearing witness to anothers existence? moments of delight, despair, hope, teasing, musing. I have been doing so much living and discovering here. There are so many snapshots playing in my head of the ordinary moments I have lived with friends here. Seven months is longer than some of my lifetimes.


I.
You talk of the systems you have lost faith in
your government and socialism, justice,
capitalism, and also the hippies,
the church was the first, the left the latest,
et cetera and et cetera,
you ask: what is left to believe in?
and I craddle my head in my arms
as if my body could shelter me from these realities
as if I could mother myself, then us, to wholeness

But: I protest: people live under these systems
and yet, we love this life
You look me in the eyes to remind me:
It is the poor who suffer; it is the poor who always pay.
I look you in the eyes because I can afford to
this is the truth: I say: perhaps to live is to suffer...

You protest: yet, still, we love this life.

We speak in your language,

an inheritance of colonization after
the history of tribes: everything with its sordid history
everything with its spectacular beauty

II.
The street breathes cold down my neck
and I smile at the sharp autumnal scent
of cigarette smoke, the end a ring 
the same neon hot as the clouds last memory of the
day's color-bleached heat. Jorge's hand
scatters ash as he laughs:
we can't quite learn to love ourselves,
I put tobacco on my fields as insecticide,
I put this in my body? Inhales, exhales,
and shakes his head still smiling.

I hug my body, though Jorge has
told me, I have at least five. This material one
is only the first level. I squeeze my arms
around my ribs to cup the body of energy,
though like water it pours out:
I can not look anyone in the eye

without being devoured.

III.
I dream of the bodies of trees.
Juan stopped the car in the moonlight after midnight
so we could embrace la Ceiba, the tree which
connects the underworld to the heavens
: solamente para este.We embraced the trunk, feet stepping on her roots-
we, dwellers of this middle ground.

Winter skies

Today is the first time I've been able to spend hours completely by myself in three months, it's the loveliest feeling, the decompression, as spacious as the undressed trees against the luminous winter skies.

There is so much I would like to write about-- hikes through the jungle, sleeping amongst the ruins, the generosity of strangers...  but today my mind is stuck on blindfolded bones, memories of the Sonoran Desert, drug war militarization, and how we circle our own stories, not knowing what they mean.

But I will leave you with my first poem in Spanish...

1.

Ella ha estado caminando

    a traves del desierto

con su soledad y sus sueños

     de la mejor vida

Ninguno le dijo a ella

sobre el sol que quema

ni el miedo que viene

    en la noche

ni todo el dolor de su cuerpo.

Ella no le dijo a ninguno

sobre el niño en su matriz

ni del hombre suyo

que escribió desde la carcel

de control:

-- no puedo regresar a ti,

ni a nuestro amor, espera

por mi, espera...

Ella estaba esperando

mientras una vida estaba

creciendo en ella.

-- No puedo esperar,

no mas, esta faltando la

mitad de mi corazon.

Estoy viniendo a ti.

Ninguno le dijo a ella

que el estará deportado

ni el hombre escéptico

ni  la frontera silencioso

ni su corazon sincero

el estaba tratando de regresar a ella

se perdía en un lugar sin nombre

Le dijo: Estoy yendo a ti.

2.

Ellos encontraron sus zapatos primero

y cuando encontaron

el cuerpo de ella,

se cayó no hacia el norte

se cayó hacia el sur

hacia él, hacia la tierra

ella huyó, se cayócon una mano

sobre su corazon.

Ellos nunca encontraron

su historia

ni sus sueños y esperanzas

ni su alma

pero el desierto nunca olvida

y cada dia mientras

la lluvia derrama lágrimas

y el viento esta soplando

con memorias en otras lugares

el desierto trata de abarcar

todo el sol, trata de tragar el

sol quemando y vivir en

nonches lúgubres, rehusando

el consuelo, pensando en las

penas ha visto dia a dia,

y no había podido cambiar

nada.