form is freedom

Louise led us into poetic thoughts:

I. The Silk Poem

I am unlike silk
in that I am not soft, pliable
I no longer feel the need
to move with ease
through the hands of others
to slide without catch
through outstretched fingertrips
But I can bind
can heft the weight of 
a singular body spinning into me
twine, untwine
can catch the fall
of an aerialist
    dangling in beauty, in strength
in precarious

power

I am no longer wrapped around
another's desires but spinning outward
twine, untwine

I am not unlike the silk that vines upward

- a steadfast hold
- a certainty
- the tumbling release of safety
into trust

I have become this: unbound

II. The Lube Poem

I am unlike lube in that I don't make 
the making of love easier
I want to complicate the idea, the question
I will not ease you into pleasure
but ask you to sit with discomfort

love is a long task
not unlike sex- it is a dying,
a euphoria, a glittering blackness,

a moment of full awakeness

I am not like lube that gives itself to satisfaction
I will not ask you to rush
from the unsettling you hold in your gut

love is an undoing
willing one's self into evolutions
willing one's self past the boundaries of internal
landscapes into the territory of another

I am not like lube inviting your passage
you will have to evoke response through your struggle,
your long journey, your hunger and thirst

I am not like lube-
wet, lush, slippery
I am the desert that beckons you
to wildness
to survive the stripping bare of your pretenses,
your defenses, leaving your very structure exposed

love is an unmaking
of one- a widening

yes,
love will make us wider.

Awoken: Roo Panes

After a week, calling this summer camp feels too dismissive of the beautiful, powerful souls I'm sharing life with here and the work they've done, the explorations we're endeavoring to take together. This group amazes me with its intensity, vulnerability, intelligence, defiance of other-ing. Despite our paths—which have been unalike in so many ways, we are like-minded. We are questioners, weepers, hungry and so full, we are lovers, we come with all we have salvaged from destructions and fears. We are bearing witness to each other.

The Hudson Valley is deep smudges of green sprawling over outcroppings of rock, a haze of humid air like a shroud- paths through woods like a dry creek bed- stepping stones, flashes of light shaken over the grass between the patches of leaf shadow. Amidst all the conversations, dialogues, and sessions the farm has been a much needed space of processing with my body. On Tuesday, I spent the morning harvesting rainbow chard and collards, weeding beds beneath the stirring hush of wind gathering in the leaves lifted by the wind and the sun pressed warm against my back. I've begun again my practice of meditation. These simple things seem the most concrete in living into dissolving the barriers within me, into believing others experience, seeing 'you are my other me.'

Over the week we celebrated Shabot, dove into some text study at Bibles and Bagels, Torah and Treats and, Quran and Cookies. (Yes, there's a theme there.) We've been examining issues of forced migration, forced returns, displacement, the refugee crisis, detention centers, and border imperialism. On Sunday we shared our life journeys over the course of a few hours and all of these stories included moments of rupturings-- for some of us moments where our communities became physically or emotionally unsafe. These stories remain present in our discussions and learnings.  At the beginning of the week as we examined Islamphobia and borders, we held the stories of the lived experience of war in Iraq, of violent repression of revolution in Syria, of Boko Haram in Nigeria, of the Rwandan genocide, and the sanctuary movement at the US/Mexican border.

At the same time we have been learning about earth care in our three faith traditions-- within Christianity the idea that God is manifested as creator, incarnate in Christ, and Holy Ghost –that we understand the oneness of God as God in community. “Building a land ethic causes us to enlarge our community to include soil, water, the plants, etc.” In Islam the concept of ‘amana’ – that everything has a purpose and you should not even kill an ant because you do not know it’s task, you should not take more than you need because nothing is yours alone. I am learning about so many beautiful traditions, passages, and ways of understanding the Divine and delving into so many questions.

For the first time in a long time I feel calm and grounded in so much unknown, so much mystery. My usual frantic planning is quieted by a sense that I am exactly where I need to be.

"Multifaith Social Justice Summer Camp"

"Summer Camp" as I've been referring to this program to explain what I'm doing with my summer is only three days in and I am enchanted with this space and my cohort. The thirteen of us are sharing an old Victorian mansion perched on the hill above the creek with a sunroom, bright wood floors, rugs and worn floral sofas to sink into, and a twenty-person dining table. We've spent the past two nights devouring each other's company late into the night while eating left over ginger bars and oranges. It feels intimate already-- tooth brushing parties and cooking breakfast together. This space feels so sacred and important for me right now-- both radically oriented and rhythmically slow- where people grow food, go kayaking and bird watching, and reflect so they can act and are willing to risk arrest at protests. Several of the founders spent years with Fellowship of Reconciliation, AFSC, and Borderlinks. 

Yesterday began with a tour of Stony Point with a vigorous investigation of the strawberry patch which rewarded us with delicious fresh berries. Later we had an anti-bias/privilege training which fed a rich dialogue about mutual liberation, intersectionality, and how to hold one's own identity while truly being open to the experience of others. My cohort represents Nigeria, Pakistan, Syria, Iraq, and America as well as Jewish, Muslim, and Christian faith traditions. In the afternoon we sat under the shade of one of the campuses giant trees (elm, maple, walnut, beech, magnolia, etc.) and had an Islam 101 class. Rabia, our teacher, hands move to punctuate all her sentences, the fringes of her shawl snapping in movement, she is a sufi mystic and draws us into the narratives and the deep beauty of the tradition. She spoke of the difference between study of religion and lived experience-- "what does it feel like to belief this in your flesh? to hold this inside of you? to have it shape the way you see the world?"

Today on the schedule was "Building a Wigwam" which I assumed was an attempt at clever naming of team-building activities... but we actually were building a wigwam. After breakfast we gathered with Great Chipmunk, an Algonquin shaman, and began with learning about the natives of this land we are living on. We received a name from the bird clan with medicine cards-- mine, the Brown Pelican. We learned some traditional welcoming and blessing songs and offered our prayers and tobacco to the Great Spirit and to the bamboo we cut for the wigwam. We spent the afternoon digging and bending and binding the bamboo while learning about the significance of wigwams and about Chipmunk's tribe. We sang more of the beautiful songs of his tradition and all laid under the 6-point star the crisscross of arcs made learning more about the spiritual understanding of his people. Then we sang blessing from our own faith traditions. 

I am so excited to live and learn with these folks. 

Twenty-Fine.

Oh little life, you are so gloriously good. Thank you. Thank you.

The Wolf Pack

My school year with the kiddos is officially over. I thought I'd feel relief because teaching is exhausting but I'm actually mostly sad. At the last day of after school yesterday I was shocked when the third grade boys all burst into tears. These tough kids who like to play fight and actually fight at every recess were all sitting at a table crying and consoling each other. One of my fifth graders asked me how I could leave them all alone as if me not returning were a complete abandonment and I guess I've felt that, like I'm betraying my seventeen little humans with their complicated emotions and thirty-second full range swings from euphoria to despair. But they've swayed my heart a bit, after two years with the AS program I'm still considering education as a future pursuit.

Today was Wolfe Fest and it was amazing to see the impact a community school makes. From parents demonstrating their newly developed English skills to their kids demonstrating the Spanish literacy they're learning/retaining and the kids performing from their community theater class to their mad dance skills and the food from several of the kids parents' restaurants to the PTO and 100s of snowballs served up by mwah-- it was the neighborhood together.

Mostly today I just feel bursting with pride and affection for this school and my little kiddos so I am posting this video to brag a little.

Democracy as Listening: Reflection on Beyond Gated Politics

I wrote this short essay in 2010 during what would become one of the college courses that influenced me most, Philosophy of the Common Good. I recently unearthed a paper copy of it on which I had scribbled: Do Not Throw Away. I'm not sure if I would still use the term laziness for our tendency toward the easiest path, but maybe it is that. This essay felt timely in the current political context, but more so I see many of these themes present as the manifesto I am trying to live by.

Democracy as Listening:

Coles examines voices that can contribute to democracy and concludes "we could take the perfect storm threatening democracy as an occasion- an instigation- to reinvent boats more worthy of journeys of democratic promise" (pg. 263). One way to do this is through the process of remaining in motion. Deconstruction speaks to this as it cultivates the democratic process of a willingness to become destabilized to peer behind and to hear. Democracy is an art of listening, of re-inventing and re-imagining as we share and mingle with one another. It requires learning to ask better questions of ourselves and of others.
     For most, laziness is our default mode of operation; we exert the least amount of energy possible to accomplish any goal. This laziness has crept into out process of conversation and undermines democratic ways of being. We know very little of how to open ourselves and how to encounter, we rely on formulaic conversation that doesn't breach the surface. Despite our truest and noblest desires to know or be known, questioning and true exploration of others are hindered by what we think we must ask or not ask. These formulaic conversations don't allow for spontaneous or new encounter. We often do not learn or meet things in new ways because we are busy (and lazily) drawing conclusions, categorizing, and organizing people and experiences in our head ahead of hearing them. Our language, rituals, and social structures confine us to the same ways of relating-- even if that leaves us without genuine human interaction or democracy. These formulas also conceal how we really desire to interact or encounter an other, a "You." -- even our self.
      Democracy is birthed from our ability to be listeners. It is not created by a set of rules or exported in a style of government; it is first and foremost the willingness to respond. This is a task of extraordinary attentiveness and of humble self-sacrifice. True listening is an act of surrendering; it is possibly the greatest act of servanthood because it completely subverts our selfish inclinations and at the core validates the other as equal. When we chose to listen to another we open ourselves to the dislodging of our own ideas and values and create a space where ideas can be confronted, reworked, and re-imagined. This is the root of democracy as a theory of remaining in motion, it sets us journeying to find the common good because the new ideas must be processed and categorized. every encounter is dynamic and shaping; though without listening they can be simply mutually reienforcing and undemocratic. When we hear the whole of an other (their values, anticipation, their self) we are forced to recognize their humanity, equality, and right to exist in all the same ways as our self.
      Yet, there are two categories we hear others in: friends and enemies. We easily allow some people to speak into our life while forcefully opposing the voice of others. This has to do with perceived difference, and the threat to our stability and way of seeing-- just as we duck from a branch swinging towards our face, we duck from the presence of others who would disturb our way of being. We believe what we want to beleive, and the way we think actually transforms how we see the world around us, the language we use controls our framework and worldview. How can we truly listen to those we repel because of their confrontation to our self? How do we develop ways of passing people from the category of enemy to friend, from tolerating to listening? What creates in us the ability to be taught-- especially by those we least want to learn from?
      Receptivity cannot be imposed from outside our selves but is cultivated within by living in the paradox of our own identity-- both as a host and a guest, as rooted and sojourner. We must enjoy the exhiliartion of discomfort, of risk, like diving into cold water, participating in an extreme sport, or giving a speech-- one comes to that moment of extreme fear and anticipation and then must plunge in. We must hold our own convictions within hopeful doubt, opening ourselves to keep asking questions, to keep pressing forward in deconstructing, to continue allowing new information in. On a personal and national level, it is this democratic listening and receptivity that protects us from the inclination toward domination. A listener must ask "what does the other feel? what does the other need? How is the other experiencing the system, is this what they desire?" As Coles notes, it is this pursuit of the other that calls us to attentiveness, it is the moral thing which creates our subjectivity-- our very humanity (pg 151).
     What motivates us to becomes listeners is the belief that only through encountering do we progress- only through listening can democracy be formed. There is a need to cultivate our capacity for wonder-- not just at beauty or scenery, but wonder a the mysteries of another person, developing our desire for exploration. As Buber says, "try to meet every person, situation, and object in its own way." Democracy requires of us to continually crack open our habits and examine them. Just as those who travel are inflicted with the "virus" (the travel bug) of craving authentic cultures-- to see new places, to travel for the chance of experiencing profoundness-- once we encounter an other in a genuine way we gain a contagious desire to travel into the profoundness of another person. The way we move forward is to destabilize and question, to draw new lines and merge ideas, to continue in this cycle of unraveling and stitching up. Coles speaks to this in his encouragement to engage with the dangerous and strange within ourselves and others and to develop receptiveness to alterity. "Encounter is the only way to challenge the fantasy and reality between our ideals."
        We will always wrestle with the subtle, yet, powerful forces inside us that wish to dominate and prone to laziness. The forces that desire to colonize the hearts of others with our own values instead of inhabiting another as guest, as a sought after presence and allowing their impression to weigh on the vacancies of our own. Democracy is an art of travel, of remaining in motion. It is the process of finding better questions to ask, more honest ways of seeking and revealing ourselves-- and of allowing others to emerge, not trying to order, control, or possess them but to reach out for genuine human interaction. This is the character of love, to appreciate and hear an other for whom they are, and to sacrificially desire what is best for them.* Democracy is only possible as we become listeners who encounter and respond.

  The End

*I think my idea of love has evolved towards both/and "my liberation is bound up with yours" and that is requires seeking the good of the other as sacrifice of pure self-interest.

//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.