I’m thankful for…
Maybe I’m filled with a sense of gratitude right now because my friend Maggie is rubbing off on me in a good way. And my mom and Shauna Niequiest, of course.
That I don’t have to know what I’m going to do tomorrow, besides go to class. I do know that I’m in the airport for the umpteenth time this summer fulfilling my reputation as the roaming gypsy, unable to get my bulging suitcases closed because I’ve filled them with books and trinkets from home. I know that I’m probably going to want to go to sleep when I get home. That traveling, being home, seeing a best friend, learning about how to teach kids for 30 hours last week, seeing friends from near and far, the past and present, was incredible, but draining. Now I’m going back to school and the whole process starts over again. I don’t feel in control of anything, but then again, I’m not sure that I’m supposed to. Quoting Maggie and my pastor from home, it’s not like you want to rewind to relive the good parts or fast-forward to skip the difficult ones. You want to live in the present and live through it.
I don’t know what the future will bring, how long San Francisco will feel like home, when/if my “old friend” running will come back to me, how I’ll get more books to Africa, where I’d get married if I do ever, if I should continue with school to get my masters.
I know that I’ve had the privilege of seeing a good friend get married this summer.
Traveled to Africa with my mom and an inspiring group of people.
Connect with troubled kids in my own city, that I might not have gotten the opportunity to otherwise.
Walked through harsh neighborhoods in NYC, only to realize I’m not as invincible and strong as I like to think that I am.
Flown more miles than ever before.
Seen friends that really know me and been surprised by new ones.
Learned that God is in the details of my life.
Been to my hometown and considered where I’ve come from and what I’ve done.
Smashed broken glass into mosaics, filled trunks with books.
Dealt with transition, grieving each loss.
As my friend Katie said yesterday, "You've had a great summer, Meg." Now it's time to have an extraordinary fall.
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Saturday, August 14, 2010
Papa Gardener
I've been really feeling reliant on grace recently. Needing grace this summer in order to survive financially. Having to ask for help has never been easy for me.
But this one, my dad! has been freely giving me grace, left and right. Breakfast at Ella's to say that he wants me to decide where I want to create a life for myself, wherever that is. Remembering my friends' names and asking me how they are doing.
Sharing my mom's and my excitement for Africa. Hearing stories about businessmen I met on planes on the way to Atlanta last weekend who offered me trips to Zimbabwe- then actually knowing the person I was talking about. In an overprotective way that only dads can be.
Trying to contain my mom when she was worried about me staying in an NYC apartment that I found on the Redeemer website.
Not making a big deal about his birthday, usually ever, even though it is tomorrow.
Here's to you, Dad- on your birthday. Thanks for supporting me throughout my life, but especially, in more ways than one, during my "turbulent twenties." I love you.
Sunday, August 1, 2010
To Be Alone with You
This is something I'm struggling with right now, being alone with God. It's something that I've claimed to have done since living in San Francisco, but I can't think of the last time that I was alone in my apartment or without distraction or homework looming in the last seven months. Maybe that's why the months have flown by and my African whirlwind adventure is over, why I'm feeling listless and empty. I want to escape, run from my pain and suffering, and not deal with the books that I'm carrying in my own suitcase to give to God. I'm waiting at the airport and I don't even know the destination. It's feeling these days like Alexander moving to Australia in "Alexander and the No Good Very Bad Day"- "Maybe I'll just move to Africa" because things seem easier there, more simple and I don't have to face my demons. It's so much easier to deal with the demons of other people or analyze other people's relationships with God than deal with my own heart.
Like why I feel alone in this city that I've made my home these past three years. Half-jokingly, I used to think that I would raise a family in my apartment (right Maggie?)
How I feel like change has been happening so quickly all around me that I've become numb to it and don't even acknowledge its effect on me anymore.
Why I feel so far away from my family and where I've come from. I've wanted to use the distance as reason for my independence.
Am I really affecting change here in any positive way? Is it like my friend Julie says, that I've affected kids all over the world and I'm standing in the circle between them beaming?
Is the issue trying to connect what I've done and who I've become to influence my community here? What does my community here even look like anymore?
It's like the Hills finale, Audrina, Lo, and Kristin all saying, "We're all moving on, we're all headed in our own directions, not necessarily in LA." The mindless TV show resonates with me.
If I can be alone with You, than I will be okay, in Uganda, in San Francisco, or halfway in between.
Like why I feel alone in this city that I've made my home these past three years. Half-jokingly, I used to think that I would raise a family in my apartment (right Maggie?)
How I feel like change has been happening so quickly all around me that I've become numb to it and don't even acknowledge its effect on me anymore.
Why I feel so far away from my family and where I've come from. I've wanted to use the distance as reason for my independence.
Am I really affecting change here in any positive way? Is it like my friend Julie says, that I've affected kids all over the world and I'm standing in the circle between them beaming?
Is the issue trying to connect what I've done and who I've become to influence my community here? What does my community here even look like anymore?
It's like the Hills finale, Audrina, Lo, and Kristin all saying, "We're all moving on, we're all headed in our own directions, not necessarily in LA." The mindless TV show resonates with me.
If I can be alone with You, than I will be okay, in Uganda, in San Francisco, or halfway in between.
Thursday, July 29, 2010
Mama Gardener
The song California Girls just came on in the cafe where I'm attempting to try and work not laying down. It reminded me of my mom, sitting on the bed of our hostel in Heathrow, watching the music video, and telling me it was her favorite song. This was the person who went from being apprehensive about our trip, going so far as to wanting a helicopter out the first day, to acquiring an African family and tearing up in the London airport after leaving Africa and our team of people. The person who is now thinking about how much we waste in America after going to breakfast with some of her friends. Who is excited about sharing with her community of family and friends about the life-changing effects of potable water from W-E-L-L-S in a remote African village. Who wishes that her church would adopt African dancing during its weekly worship services. Who stamped books and read to children who waited all day outside of the windows of the library I was trying to start. Who prayed with me about how the books were going to get over there and made a friend who knew exactly where the books should go. Who loves chipate and can't want to try the recipe at home. Who wants my dad's eyes now opened to the reality of a third world country where people contain joy and love that we in the developed world cannot comprehend. Whose facebook profile now shows her picture with girls that she and her friends helped to dress by hosting a pillowcase dress-making party. Whose worldview has been forever changed.
I'm privileged to have traveled and shared this valuable experience with you. Love you, Mom!
I'm privileged to have traveled and shared this valuable experience with you. Love you, Mom!
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Vision and reality
Activity does not always lead to productivity, as Moses my African brother helping with the librairies, says.
Here I am, first day back, already feeling overwhelmed. On the verge of tears, smelling the shellac from the hundreds of strands of paper beads in my bag. Filing a claim with United and Kenya Airways after realizing that both my SLR and flip video are missing from my checked bags. Chatting with the Africans on facebook. Sore from four flights and 50 hours of traveling.
Drinking Kenyan coffee from a Kenyan mug with my roommate. Her asking me if I have ever thought of moving to Africa and thinking how much more I feel like I can contribute when I'm there. Missing my mom and her encouragement, telling me everything is going to be okay. Realizing as many things as I want to do this week, I don't have to do any of them.
Trying to sum up my trip, pretend like it actually did happen, easing back into a developed country and being in the majority, not minority. Wanting to start collecting books to help start librairies all over Uganda. Thinking how can I possibly affect change in San Francisco, right here, right now. Hoping my blocked ears will finally pop so that I can hear again. On the verge of tears, because I haven't cried, really cried, about all I've seen and heard.
Shauna Niequist, my new favorite author, is helping me through all of this right now:
Africa is nothing if not evocative. It's a place of such unimaginable beauty and dignity and expanse and possibility, and such unfathomable suffering and despair and disease and decay. It is at once so alive and so wracked by death, so powerful in its landscape and physicality, and so powerless under the weight of famine and political upheaval and disease. Its intensity scared me and overwhelmed me, and I feel like I wandered through many long days there, stunned and tired and unable to digest what I saw and heard, and more specifically, what I felt inside myself. And even now, four years later, I'm still piecing together what happened in me and what was happening around me in those cities and villages...
I had to make things right in two ways. I had to do something personally to make things right in Africa, because now I knew too much and couldn't erase the images and sounds that had embedded themselves in me, like seeds planted in a garden. I had to make something right there, which is both enormously daunting and shockingly simple. Daunting because of how massive and tangled the roots of the issues have become- it is about famine and sexual violence and patriarchy and racism and economics and medicine, and when you think you've knitted together the magical solution, one pull on one string unravels the whole thing and leaves you with a mountain of new questions, while the clock ticks away lives by the dozen. And then again, shockingly simple, because there are such good, smart people doing such courageous, good, smart things, and what can be done with tiny little bits of money is jus dazzling.
Also, though, and more difficult, I had to make things right within me. I had to confront the person I found on that trip, the one who wanted to fly home the first night and pretend the whole thing was not real. That's the trick, I think. That's why actually getting on a plane and going there is dangerous and very important. Because I could not forget about it, as desperately as I wanted to. I had to clear away space in my mind and my heart, spaces previously occupied by easy things- groceries to buy, albums to download, people to call- and replace them with the weight of Africa, a heavy, dark thing to carry with me, something under which to labor, something under which to tremble. Because once you see it, you will never be able to un-see it, and once you see it, you will be responsible for it, and for the self it reveals back to you.
from Cold Tangerines
Here I am, first day back, already feeling overwhelmed. On the verge of tears, smelling the shellac from the hundreds of strands of paper beads in my bag. Filing a claim with United and Kenya Airways after realizing that both my SLR and flip video are missing from my checked bags. Chatting with the Africans on facebook. Sore from four flights and 50 hours of traveling.
Drinking Kenyan coffee from a Kenyan mug with my roommate. Her asking me if I have ever thought of moving to Africa and thinking how much more I feel like I can contribute when I'm there. Missing my mom and her encouragement, telling me everything is going to be okay. Realizing as many things as I want to do this week, I don't have to do any of them.
Trying to sum up my trip, pretend like it actually did happen, easing back into a developed country and being in the majority, not minority. Wanting to start collecting books to help start librairies all over Uganda. Thinking how can I possibly affect change in San Francisco, right here, right now. Hoping my blocked ears will finally pop so that I can hear again. On the verge of tears, because I haven't cried, really cried, about all I've seen and heard.
Shauna Niequist, my new favorite author, is helping me through all of this right now:
Africa is nothing if not evocative. It's a place of such unimaginable beauty and dignity and expanse and possibility, and such unfathomable suffering and despair and disease and decay. It is at once so alive and so wracked by death, so powerful in its landscape and physicality, and so powerless under the weight of famine and political upheaval and disease. Its intensity scared me and overwhelmed me, and I feel like I wandered through many long days there, stunned and tired and unable to digest what I saw and heard, and more specifically, what I felt inside myself. And even now, four years later, I'm still piecing together what happened in me and what was happening around me in those cities and villages...
I had to make things right in two ways. I had to do something personally to make things right in Africa, because now I knew too much and couldn't erase the images and sounds that had embedded themselves in me, like seeds planted in a garden. I had to make something right there, which is both enormously daunting and shockingly simple. Daunting because of how massive and tangled the roots of the issues have become- it is about famine and sexual violence and patriarchy and racism and economics and medicine, and when you think you've knitted together the magical solution, one pull on one string unravels the whole thing and leaves you with a mountain of new questions, while the clock ticks away lives by the dozen. And then again, shockingly simple, because there are such good, smart people doing such courageous, good, smart things, and what can be done with tiny little bits of money is jus dazzling.
Also, though, and more difficult, I had to make things right within me. I had to confront the person I found on that trip, the one who wanted to fly home the first night and pretend the whole thing was not real. That's the trick, I think. That's why actually getting on a plane and going there is dangerous and very important. Because I could not forget about it, as desperately as I wanted to. I had to clear away space in my mind and my heart, spaces previously occupied by easy things- groceries to buy, albums to download, people to call- and replace them with the weight of Africa, a heavy, dark thing to carry with me, something under which to labor, something under which to tremble. Because once you see it, you will never be able to un-see it, and once you see it, you will be responsible for it, and for the self it reveals back to you.
from Cold Tangerines
Friday, July 16, 2010
Book tour of Africa
Is what my mom said today when we were talking about the books all getting to Africa, one container busted, but the rest still intact. How they were loaded on the roof of a van by Africans for transport to Tororo. How someone on our team just happened to tell us about a library down the road that they had worked on last week and painted with bookshelves but no books. How kids on our team helped sort the books last night, reminiscing over the beloved stories from their trip. How somehow miraculously they all made it 10,000 miles away from home.
Choosy Moms choose Jiff (in reference to my mom), In the interest of time (as the Africans always say before they begin a 20 minute long speech), You are most welcome (how they make you feel so special every time that you greet them), women selling vegetables along the roadside, dust in your eyes, clean water to villages that have never seen it and already have their jerry cans lined up, classrooms needing painted, conversations with a new friend- a vegetarian who likes art and Africa as much as I do, dresses that my friends in San Francisco being dressed on girls that have never felt empowered before, reading Eve Ensler before bed and realizing that yes, I like all the African women with me, "am an Emotional Creature." Washing widows' feet and hearing them go "I-yyyyyyyyyyyiiiiii-yi-yi-yi" when they receive gifts and hear about women who aren't trying to buy them, who love them, who have been through trials in life too. Eating chapati bread for a meal. Seeing a goat on top of a van and then dropping through the window a second later.
Hearing that we, in the West, are in a spiritual poverty and sometimes at a greater loss than those living in poverty here. We create our own problems, whereas they live contentedly with what they have.
My head is full of thoughts, as it always is when I'm in Africa. It's the first time I can shut off the tapes that roll through my head or the distractions of city life. It's like I never left, that a part of me was here, that my heart is beating for Africa. I was made to do this, I don't know what, made to bring my mom here and see my African brothers and sisters again. Fill a school with hope, deliver dresses for girls who are wearing rags or nothing at all, seeing my friends' pictures attached to the dresses on their bodies.
Choosy Moms choose Jiff (in reference to my mom), In the interest of time (as the Africans always say before they begin a 20 minute long speech), You are most welcome (how they make you feel so special every time that you greet them), women selling vegetables along the roadside, dust in your eyes, clean water to villages that have never seen it and already have their jerry cans lined up, classrooms needing painted, conversations with a new friend- a vegetarian who likes art and Africa as much as I do, dresses that my friends in San Francisco being dressed on girls that have never felt empowered before, reading Eve Ensler before bed and realizing that yes, I like all the African women with me, "am an Emotional Creature." Washing widows' feet and hearing them go "I-yyyyyyyyyyyiiiiii-yi-yi-yi" when they receive gifts and hear about women who aren't trying to buy them, who love them, who have been through trials in life too. Eating chapati bread for a meal. Seeing a goat on top of a van and then dropping through the window a second later.
Hearing that we, in the West, are in a spiritual poverty and sometimes at a greater loss than those living in poverty here. We create our own problems, whereas they live contentedly with what they have.
My head is full of thoughts, as it always is when I'm in Africa. It's the first time I can shut off the tapes that roll through my head or the distractions of city life. It's like I never left, that a part of me was here, that my heart is beating for Africa. I was made to do this, I don't know what, made to bring my mom here and see my African brothers and sisters again. Fill a school with hope, deliver dresses for girls who are wearing rags or nothing at all, seeing my friends' pictures attached to the dresses on their bodies.
Thursday, July 8, 2010
MJ
I don't know how to sum up summer so far:
3.5 hour psych classes
The fog rolling in at night
Friendships with people going through the same things I am
Unexpected transitions and change making me feel constantly uprooted and unstable
Being 2 semesters away from being a credentialed teacher
Sharing my love for Africa with others
Having a dinner, while crying over a beer and immediately feeling better about life
Special needs kids who write Michael Jackson poems to commemorate his one-year anniversary, hug me for 2 minutes, read to dogs from the SPCA, and say "People these days..."
Opening myself up to new possibilities when I get back, feeling the anxiety lift as I think about what life will be like as of Monday...
3.5 hour psych classes
The fog rolling in at night
Friendships with people going through the same things I am
Unexpected transitions and change making me feel constantly uprooted and unstable
Being 2 semesters away from being a credentialed teacher
Sharing my love for Africa with others
Having a dinner, while crying over a beer and immediately feeling better about life
Special needs kids who write Michael Jackson poems to commemorate his one-year anniversary, hug me for 2 minutes, read to dogs from the SPCA, and say "People these days..."
Opening myself up to new possibilities when I get back, feeling the anxiety lift as I think about what life will be like as of Monday...
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