//Get up, Get down//

Obsessed with: Slyvan Esso- Coffee. 

Stray thoughts: 
Two days ago I packed up the remnants of my room in the city and made the trek home, completing the millennial trope of moving into my childhood room. Today I got the packing list for "social activism summer camp" (as I've decided to nickname the institute I'm attending).




It feels strange to depart from Baltimore after calling it home for the past three year.

I've been reading The Empathy Essays, a gift received in a package the last day I received mail in the city. It has been a week of goodbyes. A week of surprises too: unexpected encounters with friends who've been states and continents away, a hand delivered "mix tape" tucked into my back door from a friend who just moved back into the city, on to the same street-- arriving just a day before my own departure-- strange currents we humans are carried by.

"Empathy isn't just listening, it's asking the questions whose answers need to be listened to. Empathy requires inquiry as much as imagination. Empathy requires knowing you know nothing. Emapthy means acknowledging a horizon of context that extends perpetually beyond what you can see.... It means realizing no trauma has discrete edges. Trauma bleeds. Out of wounds and across boundaries. Sadness becomes a seizure. Empathy demands another kind of pourousness in response. ... Empathy comes from the Greek empatheia- em (into) and pathos (feeling)-- a penetration, a kind of travel. It suggests you enter another person's pain as you'd enter another country, through immigration and customs, border crossing by way of query."

"I needed people to deliver my feelings back to me in a form that was legible. Which is a superlative kind of empathy to seek, or to supply" an empathy that rearticulates more clearly what it's shown." - L. Jamison

I realized my mind feels pretty ugly, muddy, when I spend to much time forward thinking-- so I've been practicing mediation again, calling myself back over and over to the present moment.

Yes, I'm a Feminist.

Overheard today: "Why do you keep picking up sticks, you're a little girl not a boy, stop playing with sticks." I grinned at the little girl behind her mother's back and I hope she keeps playing however she wants too.

Yelled at me this week: "Hey. Hey honey. Hey pretty lady.  Snowflake. SNOWFLAKE ... Hey... Hey.... Hey! You're not going to talk to me?" He kept muttering about me as I walked home, then on the way back to the metro an hour later: "Hey girl! I'm talking to you cause I like you. Okay, you're not going to talk to me today? I'm going to talk to you tomorrow. and tomorrow. and tomorrow. and tomorrow. and tomorrow." And he was still muttering as I reached the corner of the block.

Piled on top of the news from EMU, new of sexism in the Peace Corps, my friend's recent f/b group, a hollaback-eqsue creation for intimate partner/dating violence, which in 2-days had 800 Baltimore womyn sharing stories... it all feels like more than exhausting- it hurts. This repetitive sense that the world I exist inside does not care about the experience of womyn or our safety and my own experience is just a tip of the iceberg for others who experience the intersectional oppressions of racism, sexism, abelism, classism, etc. It negates the value of female bodied humans when men can remain in powerful positions after harming us or who are given little consequence because their image and ego is considered more important than a womyn's.  It negates the value of female humans when our experiences and feelings are dismissed, mansplained, or trivilized or our emotional labor is expected and unappreciated. It negates our value when we are told (as I was recently) that two of the most important things about being a woman are being able to get pregnant and get wet.

Recently witnessing a frustrating gender-oppression based workshop I felt hurt for my friends who were unheard and subjected to microagressions. The gap is so far. I kept trying to think of what the small next step is, the link these men could make, the reasonable ask... and that also stirred up a rage and grief in me.... why should it be so hard for a male to trust a womyn when she states her experience or simply when she is saying no? Why should it be so hard for males to see womyn as peers, as peoples, and not just for what they can give to a man?

I'm thankful for the womyn in my life and for the males I know who are listening and for all of our continually work to dismantle sexism and patriarchy inside ourselves.

Love & Revolution, dears.

one for sorrow, two for joy

 These past few days have been ones of feeling deep gratitude and contentment for the lives that are connected to mine, in the quiet moments of layering on blankets to sit on the porch and watch the sunset dim the sky as storm clouds rolled in, walking through the farmer's market catching up on our emotional landscapes and escapades in loving others, whispering around the kitchen table when it was later then we meant to be awake, walking country lanes under a still sky- all of it feels drenched in the strong sense of belonging and being knotted into these ties that bind.

Chugging northeast, slowly toward Baltimore through the woods of Virginia I felt filled, brimming with the requited love of this valley. Each time I visit I feel like I have one less reason not to be in H-burg living in proximity to these ones who shape my life. 

Em and I were talking about measuring all that had occurred in our lives in time spans or within presidential terms-- Obama's election in 2008 (living in Uganda) till now... it is almost incomprehensible to me what 8 years has contained... homes in three countries, traveling through 16... submerged in the west coast and the east coast, my entire university experience, my first partnered relationships, women's study, Salinas and Occupy Wall St. and anti-oppression, CHIP and JCC and protests, the national guard with tanks in my cities streets, Black Lives Matter and prison work and all my incarcerated friends... humanitarian aid at the Mexican/US border... learning another language, the euphorias and despairs, depatures and returns... and the countless moments that glow "burn, burn, burn like fabulous roman candles exploding" .... wider and wider the world presses me out to the edges of myself... and each of those experiences held their particularities (the substance of all our love and good art.) 

***

...myselves ask "life, the question how do i drink dream smile 

and how do i prefer this face to another and 

why do i weep eat sleep-what does the whole intend"

 they wonder. oh and they cry "to be, being, that i am alive

 this absurd fraction in its lowest terms 

with everything cancelled

 but shadows

 -what does it all come down to? love? Love
if you like and i like,for the reason that i hate people and lean out of this window is love,love and the reason that i laugh and breathe is oh love and the reason that i do not fall into this street is love."  t.s. eliot. 

I am so small

The last day of school before Spring break I taught my first graders about yoga and for 20 minutes they were captivated by their own movement and breathing, forming animals, trees, mountains. Predictably, my own spirit feels resurrected from winter's withdrawal and hibernation-- as if I am returning to my edges and surface from with a space deep inside myself. I've been waking up at as sunrise fills my room with gold light, watching the red-winged black birds take flight at the lake, sitting in the library's window seat with a cup of coffee and the stillness. These quieter rhythms are taking root.  

Today, I went to a Maudy Thursday meditative space with my mom. It was unexpectedly sacred-- to move barefoot around the darkened room, candles flickering, a small book of poetry and psalms guiding the meditation, prayer moving easily through me- // I don't need a synagogue you said / I can pray inside my body. //  God, in all their mystery, felt near. Lately, in attending the Universalist church with Charina I've found that having this container that is broader than my own journey gives me space to know and unknow, to ask, to seek. It is a gracious space for which I am grateful.

Later, we planted Pansies, English Daisies, Daffodils, Little Leo, and herbs in the garden.  I've been retreating to my parents more and more on the weekends for the escape from the city. It is almost time to leave her. I feel the craving growing every day.

If He
let go of my hand, I would
weep so loudly,

I would petition with all my might, I would cause
so much trouble

that I bet God would come to His senses
and never do that
again.

- Meister Eckhart 

SoulCollage

“Your soul knows the geography of your destiny.  Your soul alone has the map of your future, therefore you can trust this indirect, oblique side of yourself. If you do, it will take you where you need to go, but more important it will teach you a kindness of rhythm in your journey.” - John O'Donohue

This weekend, Charina and I attended her church's SoulCollage workshop. We gathered with a dozen women, most of whom were four or five decades older than I am. SoulCollage is a therapuetic process of intuition and creation-- you build a deck of collages (cards) which represent aspects of your psyche, community, archetypes and can be read to learn from yourself (like a personal tarot in some ways). Though a lot of the time was spent quietly and individually working, I was surprised by how strongly supportive the circle felt. Some of the women shared stories of their pain and of their joys.  We sang a short hymn that had been the wedding march of a lady as she and her bride were walked down the aisle by her mom-- who had also been a mother and nuturer towards her bride since her own mother had kicked her out after coming out. We cried together. Women. Most of the women in the circle had known each other for as long as my lifetime and it made me think with gratitude of the woven branches circling my forearm, of my own circle of friends, of who we will be when we've known each others across two or three decades.

We should do the things that help us remember ourselves.

A late night listening to the rain fall after curling up on Tracie's couch to talk of depression and how to get unstuck, how we begin to believe that pursuing a life of passion and engagement is impractical. I've been feeling lonely lately and at the same time in need of vast spaces of quiet. I've been retreating into studying Spanish and visiting my parent's home to spend time sitting with them or running errands, drinking coffee, walking around the yard to spot the budding crocuses & daffodils with mom, or curled up in my childhood bedroom reading old journals.

Reading Anthony Doerr's exquisite short stories... 

“To consider water on any scale was to confront a boundless repetition of small events. There were the tiny wonders: rain drops, snow crystals, grains of frost aligned on a blade of grass; and there were the wonders so immense it seemed impossible to get his mind around them: global wind, oceanic currents, storms that broke like waves over whole mountain ranges." 

I'm reminded of how much I have to be grateful for, how much leaves me dizzy with euphoria or nostalgia and the luminescent unnamed degrees of joy the heart buzzes in and out of. 

A student told me Wednesday, "This is the best day I've ever had."  The smallest things-- unusually warm days, blue painted houses, neighborhood playgrounds. That evening Claire, Amelia, and I shot hoops on the abandoned courts, scaled the jungle gym, and embarrassed ourselves trying to do pull-ups.  Playing is a thing that helps me remember myself, exerting energy into the world, saying yes to "Ms. Meg can we play the stew pot game." I am constantly learning to go slower, to re-engage my imagination, to never tire of chalk on sidewalks, or lying in a sunbeam, or turning a cartwheel in the grass-- to never tire of being amazed. 

fragments

I keep thinking of Chinatown, lately-- of the faces of the people I knew there. I remember a warm breeze blowing silk against my legs through my bright yellow skirt while I was standing in Remi's front yard looking back at the house. It had been condemned and it sagged into the dry grass as if it was weary-- there were too many holes in the fences, too many stray cats wandering the hallways, skittering past our feet. We'd only been able to walk through the back room before water-damaged hoards cluttered the way. Remi had wanted to return one last time. I remember her standing barefoot in a hospital gown outside Dorothy's. She and Gloria were the first friends I made on the street, in on the homeless community. As he always did, Ellie was busy making her smile, a conversation I couldn't hear. I remember looking back, him holding her frail arm, the social worker a few steps behind them. These memories unravel out of nowhere, like the teal blue strands I used to find stuck to my sweaters months after I'd cut off my hair. I feel suddenly homesick for Salinas walking on Broadway when I pass the Mexican store and mariachi music swells out the open doorway. I've been sketching a picture of Lupita, wondering if Juan is still in school, if Connie is still lugging her trash bags back and forth between the day room and the doorway. That life seems so far away, four years past.

On the way home from school today, still in the neighborhood, O. ran out to greet me and threw his arms around my legs, telling me all about his day since I didn't teach him today. The affection of small children always amazes me, wins my heart.

For awhile I'd been thinking that falling in love is just a desire to propel ourselves out of boredom, to impose a drama on our narrative. Yet, listening to a friend this week made me realize that yes, love makes us do reckless, impulsive things-- but it isn't just to escape the ordinariness of living... love (in any of its forms) is about drama, about the narrative of meaning in our life (as the poets remind us over and over...  it all comes down to love.) Love of people, or a place, or even an idea is a creative force, it can unhinge us from our own expectations and norms, it makes us brave enough to re-imagine our story lines, to risk, to believe again in magic, adventure, and wonder-- even to willingly sacrifice ourselves to remain connected. Our love stories are about encounter, a point of connection and relationship (even if directed inwardly)-- and whether momentary or enduring, whether familial, romantic, amiable, environmental, or spiritual- I suppose it is our love stories that give us meaning.

Dorthy's Place, Chinatown, Salinas is a place I loved-- in all those realms-- and I am still discovering what I learned there. The other day I searched google maps for the driveway off Jefferson street that swept into our yard, beneath that thin willow. I hopped through photos-- down Alisal toward Cesar Chavez park, the bend of concrete where I balance beam walked during countless calls to the East coast. I can still taste warm dust in my mouth, hear the sparse grass of park crunching underfoot and the bark of the scraggly dog that always raced the perimeter of it's fence with aggressive possession, the icecream man's jingle and the shouts from the soccer pitches-- all this background noise to my own thoughts or a friend's voice on the other end. I couldn't trace my paths through the neighborhoods, along the creek and the fences to the skate park, crossing the long roads that stretched to the migrant fields and the Gabilan mountains, east of Eden.  Those paths belonged to the bone-deep sentiments I'd try to loosen by footfall, to the static chirping warning the distance was overcoming me-- despite all that was shifting inside of me as I made my daily treks the feeling I was left with was a determined strength that seemed to be growing, I was okay-- there, marooned in the world of men, piecing myself together, I was okay-- pulling my spine erect, my head lifted.

Love only makes us wider.
Love will be left over. 
Yes, Love will be left over. 

our hands imbibe like roots

School is a constant source of failing and learning and adapting. Tracie pointed out today that even the most life-giving work is also sometimes exhausting or causes us to sigh deeply with relief at the end of the day. I'm growing fond of my kiddos, and the classroom; I'm excited that I'll be there next year. I think they've actually convinced me that I want to pursue teaching credentials. But the future's still far away.

Meanwhile, life is full of poetry, letter writing, reading, coffee and dinners with the house and kindred spirits, celebratory walks in the thawing weather, weekends at the prison, riding the metro, caffeinated/insomnia inspired bursts of research & grant/application writing, netflix binging, sleeping in too late, Spanish lessons, and speedy carpools with bursting jams/cold draft of wind from the driver's window and the bittersweet acidity of smoke (which makes me feel younger and nostalgic for experiences not my own.)

houses

It's a rainy beginning to December.  "You live up in the sky," David says when I descend three staircases to the warmth of the kitchen to put on the tea kettle. Some days I wear gloves in my cold bright bedroom while I sit at my desk.

 I am grateful to be in this house -- it is the most diverse community situation I've ever lived in... we are young and old, American and African and European and hyphenated existences, Black, White, and Asian, queer and straight, conservative to anarchists, religious to spiritual to uncertain. Living together revolves around the kitchen table-- endless cups of tea with a changing cast of housemates while we process our days and desires and fears. 

Realizing I am in Baltimore for the long haul has felt a bit daunting-- the full responsibility of belonging to a place-- and exhilarating. 

Adulting.

    On Friday I found out that I didn't get accepted into a program I'd pretty much been banking on since the beginning of the year. I was already imagining my life immersed in Spanish again and what it would feel like to be on the airplane to Colombia come February. Turns out, it isn't my future. I'm still processing the loss of an imagined version of myself but more so, I'm leaning into what staying means. For so long there's be school or a program or re-defining experience glittering on the horizon giving shape and limit to the spaces I inhabit, sheltering long-term decision-making and responsibility. Baltimore has suddenly become not the place I'd think about returning to but the lead contender for where I will call home.
       The past month, in this space of waiting, I've felt more grounded and secure than a lot of last year-- largely due to relational time. There is always so much pressure to be defined by our work but that's such a small part of what makes my life meaningful. I've wanted time for the past two years-- time to create, to know a community, to show up in my relationships, to continue being at the prison for my friends there, to develop my Spanish. I'd rather live with a little more uncertainty and simplicity then sacrifice these times and spaces. I'm probably going to take a part-time position later today.  Now the project is to listen to this directive moment... a moment of staying here.
   
       

Granted.

Adriana and I are beginning our grant work on anti-oppression ministry in the church, specifically anti-racist ministry. The past week has been like Christmas with brown packages of books arriving on our doorstep and phone chats and coffee dates with an incredible woman whose been part of the resistance to white supremacy since SNCC.

This is work that stabs into my heart. This summer while working at Peace Camp in SE Baltimore one of my campers and I were walking to the park when he said, "I know what God looks like, I saw him in a movie. He's your color." I was startled to hear a five-year old Black child tell me that God was white like I am. As I attempted to explain to him that movies chose actors but that Jesus was most likely his color, I recognized how Christian media and his church experience had already entrenched the idea of a white God.

Just this week in Baltimore there was a hate crime-- vandalizing the anti-confederate statue that had been installed at Wyman Park (and removed by the city 22hrs later). The womb of this statue was kicked in and it was spray painted with the word "nigger."  At the same time in Harford County the KKK burned crosses on private property so in their exercise of free speech the neighborhood was terrorized and there was no legal ramifications. These are overt expressions yet the systemic and subtle persistent white supremacy, structural, institutional, and systemic racism of the U.S. remains too often ignored.

As I continue my reading and this grant work I'll be reflecting here.  Today's thought from Perkinson connects to the idea that ally and anti-racist are not nouns but verbs/adjectives describing actions... "In my estimation, only a lifetime of unrelenting struggle against the ideology of white superiority and the materiality of white control (struggle "for," i.e., redistribution of the power, property, and privilege that white skin has assembled for itself historically in this modern world) could ever qualify one for embrace as an ally. I have not yet proved worthy."

confessions of a conflict avoider

This week I did a 40-hr training course in Mediation & Conflict Transformation skills from the transformative/relational framework, which is a theory of conflict resulting from fracture in interactions and the human spirits yearning for understanding & respect where restoring the quality of interactions leads to shifts in empowerment & recognition. (Brilliant.)

One of the many things I am still thinking about was a chart that had styles of conflict and that avoidance was low on personal goals and low on relationship goals. For a long time I thought of avoidance as highly relational, I was after all saying nothing because I wanted to preserve the harmony and I'd take responsibility for how I felt, what I could do better, etc. It's taken me a long time to realize that avoiding conflict or ignoring it or choosing only to deal with my internal side of it isn't a relationship bridge- it's a barrier of its own. It doesn't allow the relationship to grow or for the other participant to acknowledge harm, clarify, or simply have agency in how they'd respond to my emotions. I have suffered a lot of things over the years because of avoiding the way I'd been disappointed, hurt, had trust broken, etc. and being willing to "forgive & forget."  One of the trainers of the course defined forgiveness as extending the possibility to rebuild/regain trust. I thought about how often in avoiding conflict, I haven't given people a chance to recognize how they've broken my trust (I'm looking at this one-sided because I also tend to be accommodating so if the conflict is originating in someone else catching a feeling about something I did I'm quick to apologize.)  I woke up from a dream about a friendship that dissolved almost 5 years ago and I felt a sense of grief, that I have lost so much because I didn't know how to be direct, how to say even "this hurts me." I've been a champion (for the past few years) of asking for what you need, saying what you want, etc. but the slowness of making that my own reality, and the cost of not seeking to grow through a relationship by directly exploring our conflict is settling on me in a new way.  I'm thankful to feel more empowered and certain of my voice these days and excited to approach my conflict more directly, seeking collaboration and understanding of the deeper roots, instead of turtling up in my shell.

love only makes us wider

I have never liked change, which is perhaps why I fling myself into it-- drastically, sometimes impulsively, other times reluctantly-- as if I could lessen its power and constancy if I throw myself into it enough times hoping to change Change into a constant familiarity that doesn't unsettle me.

Americorps is racing towards an end (with still a month of summer peace camp to come and anti-oppression lessons to plan and endless paperwork and, and, and) and I am grateful for all that I didn't imagine would be part of my life that Notre Dame Americorps and the nuns vision has drawn me into... like the life of this city, the sense of home here and that this city's struggles are mine. "My liberation is bound up with yours." The interwovenness of community work and life... running into families I know while wandering the neighborhoods of the Southeast, being invited birthday parties and graduations, seeing kids from one program with their siblings at another-- running into them in the park, the library, even protests, Cameron running off the school playground to hug me on the sidewalk, of my co-teacher telling me to call her if I'm in the streets-- this is the way I have wanted to become part of a community.  Harrisonburg and Salinas and Baltimore-- the smallness of being known in a place.

Yesterday, I had an unexpected evening off and sat in my kitchen with the windows open drinking cold coffee while my jasmine trees fragile stalk swayed at the lightest stirring of the hot breeze. I have been thinking about "chosen family," about platonic love, about transience.  The past two years in Baltimore have been some of my happiest and busiest, full of connection and spaces of constructing and deconstructing my ideas. I'm grateful for the radical spaces here.

I felt the conviction of this yesterday:
Late Fragment

And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth.

:  the sense that no matter, I can accept love as a condition of my existence.  In accepting this condition, I can be freed from trying to get others to affirm/prove to me my value, worth, favorite status.  I can love without demand or insecurity, can appreciate and seek deep connection, affection, and intimacy without fear.

We exist, therefore we are wanted and needed in the universe and this is what it means that we live immersed in love, this is how a God who is a radical love that erases boundaries shows up in the world-- through relationships, through poetry, through struggle, through sorrow, through living.

re-reading letters

I stumbled across this letter, from three summers ago and thought of how my poetry teacher told me I would likely struggle forever over the with the theme of in-articulation and of one of my favorite poems by Jacqueling Berger... The Failure of Language.

memory/or defining god to your agnostic lover... 

Mm. I love the thought of the incarnation as God becoming a creature. I don't think I'd ever thought of it in exactly those terms before... it seems very apropos to deep ecology and God's presence as an element in all things.

You asked me a couple of weeks ago what I mean when I say God... I am still struggling to articulate that and I'm not sure... I mean a lot of things when I say God:  the force, mysterious, of Life, of birthing, of beginning, the essence of consciousness-- as beyond my grasp as how a redwood tree grows or the intelligence of mycellium or electricity and movement creating thoughts and sound and sight. Is God like the internet, containing everything but more-- conscious of all that is contained in a way we can't understand. An afterlife. What does that mean? Yet when I sit and pray I know deep inside myself in the truest way that I am connecting with a thing outside myself. I ache for God, and for mercy to have patience, to accept the revelations the Godself willingly gives, to accept the limitations of my own animal body and perception. Jesus. Not the fullness of God in a way we can comprehend, because we can never hope to comprehend and contain God in our understanding-- but the fullness of God- to me an incarnation... maybe that is the mystery of Christ, learning to incarnate full-animal-body humanity and divine spirit, non-dualism. The incarnation of Hagia Sofia.

Yesterday I sat in my friend's empty house with the patio doors open and woodwind music playing and witnessed a rainstorm gather, one solitary drop at last falling on the melon-orange tiny petals and rolling lavishly off the the thick tongue of a leaf below. Then a chorus of fine mist as thin as wisps of waterfalls carried off by wind. It climaxed in a brief exultation of lush, heavy beads-- fat and extravagant-- throwing up tiny applause of splashes and just as suddenly dissipated. The sun reached its palms to cover the entire porch as if it were a lover stretching out to press against everywhere the rain had laid down. It felt like a private, intimate gift between the sky and I to watch it quiet and still. "As for me I know of nothing else but miracles."

(What miracles have you seen today?)

God. It's an empty word (like love or f*ck, useless words.) But, maybe the emptiness of the word-- the nothingess and everything is in a way another way of knowing 'god.' I like to refer to God as Uncreated One, Ein Sof, etc. Maybe when I say God I mean... this mystery that we can know pieces of.

The sort of thing I think about...

A quote from Kenneth's f/b.. "Earlier this week my little girl attempted to explain to me why black is ugly. Not all black just the real dark black she clarified. She also told me that she wanted to be just like her teacher, who of course in this educational system is a white woman. "I can see a lot of my future in her" was her exact quote.

This is the part of our development that too often goes unaddressed. In 5th grade (in spite of having PRO BLACK Parents) my little girl is learning that black is somehow inferior to white. This devaluing of black life is intrinsic in our white supremacist social institutions (Schools for sure).

I responded "girl you are crazy, dark skinned blacks are amazingly beautiful." Grabbing my own locks, nothing is more beautiful than your natural look." I love myself to much to think black is anything but great. You need to learn to see yourself in yourself and love what you see."

Not wanting to be lectured to, she said ok and changed the topic.

I know my role, and how I have to constantly give her a different script to read and believe in. I have to convince her that black is beautiful in a world that begs to differ. I have to introduce her to many successful black women and hope she finds a hero in one of them. But too often my words become the small print at the bottom of the worlds narrative." 

***

My thoughts:

This is tragic and the reality of this makes me not know my place in the world, because how do I live in such a way to be part of dismantling that narrative when its perpetuated just by my physical body if I am in spaces where I am working in communities of minorities? How do white people actually dismantle white supremacy in institutions and culture? It's like rape culture- so pervasive there has to be active and intentional disruption. 

It's also problematic in that I don't think the ideal is black communities/white communities/asian communities/latino communities broken down and then broken down again and divided into their smaller minorities-- religious affiliation, sexual orientation, gender identities, etc... but, how do we live together in communities and work towards valuing all the different colors and cultures and ways of being in ways that validate and affirm so that white supremacy isn't perpetuated? What stage are we in now? Do white people need to take a step back from communities where they are over-represented in positions of power/authority? What are the steps I could be taking? How do I support youth development and anti-oppressive, anti-white supremacy in the work I do among kids that I don't look like? and among kids that I do?

here.

I move or the air moves, stirring the moment. Everything is moving. Outside a siren's sound swells in the air smothering the soft notes of a song. Someone dies a violent death almost every other day in this city. But that is only part of the city's story. The grid of streets in southeast Baltimore is becoming familiar, the stretch between Patterson Park and McElderry wearing out my shoes. The people I run into at workshops and lectures and in the community, are becoming expected, affinity and connections sprouting.

I spent last weekend at the prison with AVP. This week, Coach Carter cooked us crabs and we walked to the river with him and his son, later we watched spoken word poems in the 'man-cave' before the football game. "I wanted you to meet my family because we are going to be family. We're going to work together, cry together, struggle together and celebrate together."  Over the week, I listened to people in the neighborhood, especially youth, share their experiences of racism and participated in community art. Listened to lectures by Davon Love, the Baltimore Algebra Project. D. Wight, and Eddie Conway-- discussions of structural/systemic racism, of inheritance, of race and pride, of whiteness, of the prison industrial complex and isolation, of what it has meant for black parents to raise black children and police their behavior so the police won't, of counter-histories, and the importance of remembering.

"One of the things that makes a community strong is their ability to pass on knowledge."

"We have a responsibility to remember..." to disallow the disappearances from history (of entire cultures, of protest and movements, of people), to remember the stories that the system does not want us to access. I never know where to begin this remembering all the stories I'm entrusted and the encounters that need to held on to... this living is so immense.

“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it." - Rumi 

Baltimore and I are becoming more entwined, and its scary for me to look at a place with the idea of longevity. I'm frightened when I am moved by this city and feel a sense of belonging inside myself, frightened of the lives I might say no to by saying yes to being here, by giving myself to this community-- and frightened by the weariness of insider/outsider dynamics-- but the discomfort whispers of growth.

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.