Amigos! What a beautiful week it has been. The other interns and I agree—we’ve all hit stride. We’ve gotten into a groove with our projects, whether it be building a shitter, going into the elementary school to sing “heads-shoulders-knees and toes!” with the 18 kid multi-age classroom, or sculpting a huge octopus on a mud-built wall. But more so than projects, we’re hitting stride in our relationships with each other. We’re getting to know each others personalities and patterns. We’ve forgiven each other more than once and expressed appreciation for moments of patient instruction and creative hilarity. We’ve dance partied in the kitchen to Old Crow Medicine Show and MIA, we’ve mooned each other, cut each other’s Mohawks, bathed each other’s sunburn in aloe and yoga-ed together at 6 am. We’ve worked through vastly different communication and planning styles to complete challenging projects. And we’re still learning about each other, discovering in our midst the Washington State track champion, the flamenco guitarist, the calm one in the midst of a scorpion bite or sliced finger, the songwriters and stand-up comics. We’ll all be sad to leave the community we’ve formed.
As far as my future after this place, I’m keeping the eyes of my heart and ears of my soul open (is that sufficiently vague for y´all?). The past year has been one of self-reflection and learning, of placing myself in simultaneously familiar and intimidating situations for short term projects. With Vermont and the Ranch, I left the support and safety of living in a Christian community. After the initial excitement of a new place faded a bit, I was faced with stunningly diverse and gorgeous people who value many things I value (creativity, conservation, community, carpentry…all those great “c” words), but who oftentimes hold vastly different morals, worldviews or motivations than I. As a great seeker of meaning in both the large and the small, I take everything to heart. My brain and soul take in all of these new people, new ideas and new experiences. After mulling them over, my mind and spirit combo revisit my current beliefs, values and understanding of the world, like a writer going back to a manuscript that she’s been writing bit by bit all her life. And just as that writer scribbles out new plotlines, unexpected character developments and poetic flourishes that she didn’t even know existed in her creative consciousness when she started, so the novel of my soul gets rewritten and taken in new directions that I marvel at. As I´m sure you can all affirm in one way or another, it’s an exhilarating, emotional, scary, giddy, transformative process to continually try to take in a world that’s always becoming bigger and richer. It’s also addictive! A poem I wrote as I was journaling several weeks ago helps to explain a bit more why I think I’m attracted to these places that don’t provide a comfort zone of homogeneity that I’ve known before:
“A fish out of water,”
Some would call me.
Maybe so, but I can’t resist diving in.
I’m addicted to these strange waters
Newness and differentness
Pang and revelation
I relish
And I sink.
I relish the diversity, the feeling of my soul and heart opening, flexing, beating to cadences other than my own.
I sink under the weight of difference, of perceived or real ostracization.
I relish the opportunity to reinvent myself, to reintroduce my personality, to start anew.
I sink as I pigeonhole myself, as I realize I am not who I want to be.
I relish those moments of connection when I and another listen to each others’ souls, speaking honestly of dissimilar lives.
I sink under the fear that I will be misunderstood, that the most unusual and radical parts of myself will be scorned and shunned.
“Perhaps,” I think sometimes, “I should keep to my own.”
But as soon as I think it
Oceans grow smaller
And the world shrinks—
Comfortably—
But it shrinks nonetheless.
So that’s where I’m at right now, navigating the emotional roller coaster that is my exploration of the world and of God. I often get very frustrated that I’m not a more easygoing, laidback, even keeled explorer. Why do I have to feel everything? And though I’m getting better at letting go, I’m also learning to accept who I am. I’m a free-spirit, but as my older brother declared wryly one day as I hashed out life’s most recent revelations and frustrations, I’m the most high-strung free-spirit he’s ever met. So I’ll keep feeling, keep striving, keep growing, keep seeking. I’ll mull things over often with my God and that hippie, peace and love son of his. I’ll glow over the lessons learned and the kim chi eaten and the laughter belted out and the costumed sushi nights. I’ll stay connected to my Christian community through letters and emails and solidarity and prayer. I’ll most likely keep hopping from place to place with my eyes wide open until one location or person or mission shouts for me to stop a take a load off. And God will continue to write on my soul like a manuscript that’s soft around the edges from so much editing and doodling on and adding to. Good think he’s one of my favorite authors.
Thanks for reading, friends! Buenas noches…
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