people and places

Angel is one of my best friends. He happens to be engaged to another one of my best friends, Joy.

They're in love and it's beautiful. They light up when the other one walks into the room. They put each other first. They can't keep their hands off of each other. If you ever need a reason to hope, spend some time with the two of them.

Apparently though, Angel used to be quite the ass. I didn't know this version of Angel. I've only ever known the version of Angel that buys extra slices of pizza and then walks the neighborhood to see who looks hungry.

We were all talking about this a few weeks ago, about both versions of Angel. We all sat around Joy's living room, the friends that Angel has had since middle school, Joy, and me, and debated how such a dramatic shift could happen in one person.

The conversation quickly turned from the two versions of Angel into a debate about the types of events in our lives that change us.

See, Angel went to Morocco two summers ago. One of our friends thought that going to Morocco changed him more than if he went to visit family in the Dominican Republic. Our other friend thought that poverty is poverty is poverty and exposing yourself to the world will change you, regardless of where you go.

The debate lasted about three hours. Nobody won.

That conversation has resounded between my ears ever since.

I've spent the past few weeks looking at my own life and wondering which places, which circumstances, which conversations, which relationships, and which moments have had the greatest impact on my life.

What broadened my horizons the most? What awakened my soul to beauty? What kindled the wonder within me? What taught me to turn my head towards grace and mercy? What made my hands need to create?

Obviously, it's a combination of all of the good, the true, the beautiful, the success, the failure, and the ugly in my life experiences. It's holistic. Obviously.

But even so, I can look back at definitive moments that shaped me. I can look back and see my life hinge on one moment and forever alter the course of what was and what would be.

And even still, I can look back and see that I have consistently been changed over time without an event in which to give credit or blame.

I ponder all of these things on the eve of the eve of my journey to Kenya for the summer. I sit in the still of the night in the comfort of my sister's home knowing that I will soon be thousands of miles away in a world I've only ever imagined. I think of how having my family has given me the foundation to leave. I think of how this new experience will alter my view of the world from here on out.

I wonder without answers.

I don't know.

I don't know if Morocco would have changed Angel more than The Dominican Republic. I don't know.

I don't know if Kenya will change me more than Latin America, more than the Middle East. I don't know.

I do know, however, that I have been changed. I know that I will be changed. I know that that comes with a responsibility to see my community, my neighbors, my school, with eyes that are awakened to love. I know that all of my experiences are in vain if I don't live in a way that extends dignity to the man that sleeps outside of the deli by my house. I know that if I forget all that I experience so that it never touches my daily life, then I don't deserve to go in the first place.

dreaming of floors

i know it's not july.  i've known it's not july for the past nine months.

i know because of the constant date that i have to swipe away every time i unlock my phone.  i know because it's felt like early february for about 6 months.

i know because i'm surrounded by an ocean of cement and jungle of concrete.

i know it's not july, but i'm blogging anyway.

i'm blogging because, even though it's not july, i'm still connected to the julys that i have left behind and they are still connected to me.  it's true.

it's always been true.  it's been true for all of my months of all of my years.  always.

sometime it's difficult for me to remember that truth.  sometimes it's difficult for me to feel that truth.

sometimes it feels like the moment i'm in is the only moment that i've ever known.

sometimes if feels like i'm not standing on the shoulders of every person that has ever raised a fist in the air for women, for the oppressed, for equality, for education, or for justice.




and then, sometimes, i scroll down my facebook news feed and that truth stares me in the face.



let me explain.

my july of 2012 was spent learning and teaching and loving in the Dominican Republic.  i wanted to understand DR so that i could understand my community, so that i could understand my school, so that i could understand my classroom.

while i never forgot those lessons, while they inform my relationship with my community on a daily basis, i wonder about the community that i left in DR and if any of that summer meant as much to them as it did to me.

i'm sure it didn't.

but just like all of the people that have gone before me, just like all of the heroes i look up to, i stand on their shoulders without their knowledge.  their lives form mine and most of them will never know.  most of them aren't even alive to see it.

culture is forming around us all of the time.  it's day in and day out.  it's every moment.

sometimes we form cultures and never see them change.  sometimes we plant seeds and never see the fruit.

when i was in DR i colored with kids on a shattered cement floor.  i left DR, those kids, and the shattered cement floor.

when i was sitting in my living room scrolling my facebook news feed i saw that same floor.

i saw it restored.

new.  perfect.  


like a dream.

i don't claim any part of that process.  i don't take any credit for the new cement that was poured.

i don't.

i'm well aware of my place in the world.  i have no disillusions of grandeur.



all of it made me think, though, about how change takes time and about how we rarely see the effect of our actions in the moment.

it made me think about how our actions in the moment are important because they make the changes that we might never see.

it gave me hope for DR, for my neighborhood, for my school.

it gives me hope when my friends and i get together in the evening to pick up trash on the streets and the same streets are flooded with litter when i walk to work the next morning.

it gives me hope when my kids live in a world that has given them an uneven playing field and all they want to do is play baseball.

it gives me hope when people dream bigger dreams for the world around me, even if i never see them come true.

July habits

I've spent a bit of time, at least in the past year or so, thinking about habits.  

I'm talking about physical habits, the ones I do with my body on a daily basis.  These are a different kind of habit than ones of the heart, like my tendency to label people that drive Hummers or respect Ann Coulter.  

I've been pondering the ones that I have that I wish I didn't.  Like listening to my iPod anywhere and everywhere I go or incessantly destroying my cuticles because I don't stop touching them or how I drink coffee every morning.  

These are habits of the physical nature.  

Although, I know there is no such thing.  Everything is connected, after all.  

For the sake of argument, though, I'll concede to delineate between two inseparable worlds.

July gives me a chance to lean into my habits.  In that, I get to be someone new.  In july, I don't have to conform to what is expected of me by people that I share life.  No one knows what to expect.  

We're all new to each other.

In July, all of my routines are different, forcing me out of my habits.  For good or for bad, I have to figure myself out outside of who I've convinced myself and others that I am.

In July, I realize how easy it is to be new.  I realize how my environment dictates my choices and how bendable I am to it.

In July, I can feel which habits follow me, regardless of environment, and I get to figure those out as I sense their shadows behind me.

I love July. 

It's hard as hell.  And I love it.

I love it because I get to feel bigger than my issues.  I get to see who and what I am and I get to decide who and what I want to be.

I didn't used to think this way.  I used to think that i was stuck in the stank of life that I had covered myself in.  At different moments and in different periods, I've covered myself in both the ugly and the beautiful.  And in each, it's hard to remember how I got there or how I might get out.

In the past two years, I've realized that I need people that remind me of who I am, that love me too much to lie to me, that walk the road with me.

It takes me an insane amount of time to develop these friendships.  Combine my introvertedness with a fierce sense of independence and fear of being known and you'll start to get the picture.

Despite all attempts to be a rolling stone, I do have these friends.  These people in my life where we can call each others' bluffs, sing new songs, share beautiful moments, cry together in bathroom stalls, and love intensely.  

It's intimacy.   It's beautiful.

And it's with these people that I feel safest to lay out my habits and ask for advice, for help, for clarity.  It takes a certain amount of vulnerability that is earned over time.  It happens when that vulnerability leads to open, honest conversations.

They happen on stoops in the dark of night and street corners in the early spring. 

In one such conversation, my friend suggested that change is as easy as making new habits.  

I scoffed in my heart, thinking she didn't understand.

But I was the one that didn't understand.  It took months and months to let those words in my life.  It took new experiences.  It took chances.  It took a good hard look at my life.  It took all of me.  

But she was right.  Sometimes you just need to make new habits.

I think about that conversation every time I pass the corner where we stood to talk, less than two blocks from my apartment.  I think about it when I'm in school, when I'm in Indiana, when I'm in my car, and when I'm sitting in Jerusalem with eight more hours to wander before I board my plane home.

Environments, emotions, friendships, vulnerableness, and habits.

Every July, I get to lean into all of the above.

I love July.

 

شكرا and תודה

Everyone is intelligent in some capacity.  I'm convinced of it.  

We all have some area that are brains are naturally inclined towards.  

Some of us find those inclinations and we spend our energy pursuing them.  Some of us push against those inclinations and we spend our energy trying to create someone that was never meant to be. 

I think about this every time I listen to a naturally gifted public speaker captivate an audience.  Verbal charisma.  

I think about it every time I witness a kid try to make a layup during basketball tryouts and throw the ball over the backboard.  Maybe they're really good at singing?  Maybe they should sign up for chess club?

I know my strengths.  And I know my not-strengths.

I'm not linguistic.  I don't pick up on languages easily.  I have to actively try.  To listen.  To practice.  To work.

Eight years in Washington Heights gave me enough of the Spanish language to understand conversations and speak some semblance thereof.  But if you are a linguistic learner and you we're me, you would hablar mucho.

One day, I will hablar mucho.  One day.

Knowing that language isn't my gift has limited my desire to add other languages to what's in my brain.  I'm not going to speak three or four languages fluently.  It's just not n the cards.  So I save all of the linguistic space that I have for Spanish.

That means that even after being in Israel for a month, I really bank on meeting an English speaker when I have to go to the bathroom or find the bus.

Without trying to brag, I did learn one word (in arabic and in hebrew) while I was here.  I learned how to say, "thank you."

شكرا and תודה

It's honestly all that I've needed.  I can express myself to the point of getting my point across to anyone.  And when I do, I simply say, شكرا or תודה, respectively.

I don't need anything else.  I just want to say, "thank you" everywhere I go and for everything I experience.

Thank you, Israel.  Thank you.

You taught me more about the world, about the Middle East, about life, about people, and about myself than I had expected.

Thank you.

You showed me those that love their enemies and turn cheeks to look oppressors in the eye. I see these and want to be like them.

Thank you.

You showed me oppressors that disenfranchise the least of these in order to gain political power.  I see these and want to be the opposite.

Thank you.

You introduced me to the land, to people living here, to ancient ways, and to life woven through us all.  I want to always remember.  Always.

Thank you.

I want this to be the posture of my heart in every moment of my life.  I want to say, "thank you" for this moment, in every moment, always.

I'm glad I learned a new word.  I'm glad I learned it in two new languages.

I'll be wandering these streets for two more days.  I've got the bag on my back and the shoes on my feet.  

And I've got thanks in my heart.

I don't need more.

Hearing and listening

I love traveling abroad for the fact that everything is new.  From ordering in coffee shops to music on the radio to casual greetings between neighbors, to public transportation.  

New.

I hate traveling abroad for the exact same reason.  

The safety of hearing the familiarity of my native language, favorite songs, and voices of  loved ones comforts me in a way that I never remember until I'm standing on foreign soil and lacking all that is intimate in my daily life.

Israel is the opposite of familiar for me.    

I don't know the arabic or hebrew alphabet.

I don't speak either language.

I don't understand either language.

Both cultures are foreign to me.

I feel a bit like an alien.  Like all that I've know about relating to others for the past 30 years is irrelevant at any given moment.  Like all social skills acquired until this moment are currency that no one uses in this new land.

It's a completely foreign experience in every sense of the word.

I was pondering this exact aspect of my journey this morning.  I was alone in the hut and had some time to sit, to read, to clean, to think.  In the middle of the my solitude, a regular guest came to visit.

Yasser.

Yasser spends more time in this hut than all of the rest of us.  He's literally here for the entirety of his day.  

And while Yasser is unique for a thousand reasons, he is most unique because of his inability to hear properly.  A kidney disease has altered his hearing to the point that you have to scream your name in his ear, over and over again, until he can get enough of the sound to call you something relatively close to what your parents put on your birth certificate.  

I'm "Kelpy" and I think that's impressive.  You should take note and be impressed, too.  I introduced him to Helga and she's now "Welter" for the rest of her time here.  

So I'm sitting with this guy who speaks no English, no Hebrew, speaks a broken variation of arabic, doesn't read, and doesn't write.  It's just the two of us.  We're sitting together while I make coffee, read, check paint colors, and carry on in daily life.

All the while, we're actively communicating.  And I realize, in that very moment, that I know Yasser as well as I know any other person on this compound, even though we have zero common ground in which to convey the thoughts in our heads.  

It astonished me.

We have complete conversations about how he put a nail through his foot as a small child, how he would prefer to sit in the shade and not in the sun, how the coffee made him more energetic, how he wants to wash his baseball hat so it would smell good again, how he likes to draw, and how he doesn't like spicy food.

These are full conversations that look more like a game of charades than a casual exchange between friends.  These interactions require full body involvement, not passive/half-assed/pretend engagement.  

Honestly, it's taxing at moments.  Sometimes I just want to be able to say that I need space, that I'm not in the mood to talk, or that I'm tired.  But neither of us have that option.  So it always has to be intense, if it is going to happen at all.

It does happen, despite the effort required.  It does happen.

Yasser has no other alternative.  He has something to say so he finds a way to say it.  The language barrier doesn't stop him, because he has a language barrier with everyone.  

I sat next to him for several hours this morning and thought about how I know him better than everyone else here, how we don't have a single word to exchange in a column language, and how he makes me slow down in everything I do.

It was a beautiful moment.  It gave me hope for every person on this planet.  It gave me reason to believe that we can find a way to connect to other people, regardless of how different we are, if we can work to make them see as we see while we work to see as they do.

Yasser has filled me with a kind of hope that I'm not sure I ever had before.  

I hope I can find a way to tell him that.

  

seeing things

I'm going to be blatantly honest and say that I had never heard about permaculture before I volunteered to help facilitate this course.

It took me all of 38 seconds to read an overview of the program and decide that I could commit myself and my July to these ideals.  

It felt like my urban studies program, but focused on agriculture instead of on cities.   

It felt like a month of what my mom has drilled into my head about holistic nutrition coupled with asset-based community development all wrapped around service to the oppressed. 

It just made sense.

I've been here for two weeks and it keeps making more and more sense.  Every day shows me something new in the world.  Something new in me.

The past few days I've been appreciating the diversity of vision.  

There is a certain vision that is required in permaculture.  It's a new way to see things.  It's a way that I haven't seen before.

It's the ability to look at an old door, cement blocks, and mattress...and see a bed.  

It's the gift of seeing the need for a shelf in the shower and then looking around to figure out how we can make one out of what we already have.

It's the foresight to understand that we don't throw things "away" because there is no "away." 

It's a different vision than an interior designer would have for a space.

It's a different vision than an investor would have for a space.

It's a different vision than an architect would have for a space.

It's a unique niche.  and it's not always pretty.

You won't find anyone selling a soup strainer taped to a broken stick the next time  you're looking to mix cement.  But guess what?  It worked perfectly when we made our cob oven today.

Sometimes I walk through the streets of New York and i can't imagine the detail it took to plan even one of those buildings.  Nor can I fathom the way the brain works for a musician.

And then you give me a piece of blank paper, a white wall, or a mound of clay...and I can transform it into the emotions that are wound within me.  

That's my vision.

Different than yours.  

Different than theirs.

All equally needed.

Sometimes I love that about humanity.  It lets me live in a world where I get to interact with systems that I are beyond my mind's capacity to comprehend.

It lets me sit around a table and make beautiful things with beautiful people that love the same things as I do.

Sometimes I hate that about humanity.  It means that even though you really annoy me, you might see things in a way that the world needs, that I need.

I don't want to need your vision, especially if I don't particularly like your personality or agree with your worldview.  

But I can't have the ideas, insight, or direction that you have.  So I do need you.

Opposite pieces of a complete circle.

One.

The doctor, the artist, the banker, the poet, the gardener, the mathematician.

All of us.

Different visions. Different brains.  Different functions.

One whole. 

One people.

One.

 

culture, songs, and presents.

Every community has a culture.  Every place has a culture.  Every environment has a culture.

We breathe it like air, without understanding.

It's the way we interact with our friends, our coworkers, our bosses, our teachers, our enemies, and our neighbors.

Most times, the quality of the air is dependent on the people that we stand next to.  We interact with culture based on the norms that have been decided by those people.  

I understand that.  I respect that.  I live in that.

But, if the culture is decided by the people standing next to me, then I can help to decide it, too.  

I am, in the end, standing next to someone else...

Being in Israel, in this hut, with these people, has given me the gift of presence.  I've been reminded that slow, whole, intentional life is a practice that takes deliberate concentration. 

Every. Single. Moment. Of. The. Day. 

And that presence, that authenticity of that moment, gives me the freedom to be whole.  To be fully present.

There's a safety when you can look into someone's eyes and know that they are with you, that they get you.  That they aren't waiting for the next thing, the next moment, the next anything, but that just being where they are is enough.  

That kind of presence is rare.  It opens the door for everyone to be in the moment.

Most of the time, I usually see people's eyes in the reflections of their phones.  I'm sure mine have been reflected from my own, as well.

I don't like that.  I don't like that at all.

I don't want to be that person.

It's easy here.  We all have the same conceptual framework.  We have a common language.  A shared culture.  

We have presence.

I'm more a part of that than I have ever been before.

It's the song of my heart and I found some people in a desert that were already singing it.  It was easy to join that song.

What scares me, though, is that my heart should be singing the same tune wherever my feet take me.  I don't know that it does.

I think it sings the cultural melody with the people I stand next to, instead of singing its own song.

I don't like that.  I don't like that at all.

I don't want to be that person.

I want to be the one that determines the culture.  I want to invite people to sing a better song.

I don't want it to be present when the people around me are present.  I want to establish presence as my own cultural norm, everywhere I go.

I can't do that if my heart is not in tune.  

I can't do that if I'm not present with myself.

It starts with me.  It starts with a properly ordered life.   

I want that.  I want to be that person.