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.