Another World (February 2014) by Keith

Many of you know that I enjoy my work, that I find meaning in it, and that it is thus a difficult thing to leave. But I don't feel that I've shared a lot about what I do, so I'm going to follow in Katie's footsteps and describe some aspects of my job. This may be part of the process of verbalizing aspects that will be helpful in mourning and moving on.

When I first started at Messiah, it was a means to an end, namely to get Katie through grad school. When this position I'm in opened up, it was supposed to be temporary- just one year. Then it turned into 2...then 3...now 4. I remember talking about how I never wanted to be someone that ended up at Messiah. Though I understand that, and still generally feel the same sentiment, I also would be lying if I said that this move to WV is not without it's daily doubts and pain.

Today, a student dropped in to share what's been going on in her life. She isn't someone I supervise, but I've met with her a bunch the past 2 year. We often talk about how much she takes on, what balance looks like, and how to care for one's self. This time, we ended talking about the differences between her and her very traditional Cuban family, and how it was difficult to come home and have a different perspective on life than what she had growing up. While she was talking, she was coloring with markers (a helpful means of processing for her). It ended with her feeling relieved, relaxed, and listened to.

One of my student directors is the most phenomenal administrators I've ever met. Her skills of organization and management make me look like I'm a spontaneous Type B. But she needs work on an interpersonal level. She's worked at the center for 3 years now, and often begrudgingly sits in our meetings when I make suggestions of how relational skills are as, if not more, effective to logistical skills.  This past semester, every other meeting we have ends with her in tears because she feels like she's grown so much through this role, has come to understand healthy work relationships, privilege, and poverty in ways she never considered (she comes from a rich family...like Katie), and how much her service at Paxton has changed her life.

Here's the thing- this has been one of the only places where some of my natural tendencies have really shined as strengths, whereas other times they seem to be more pejorative.  For instance, my ability to be challenge people, to be contrary, this is something that has helped to push my students beyond their usual expectations and to help them succeed beyond what they would normally.  This is one of the things that the student director has said has most changed her.  I try to pull out strengths from my students that they often don't recognize, but also challenge areas that they may be unaware of.  

I feel like I'm good at my job. I'm more type A than I like to admit, but that helps me to balance and juggle 4-5 mtgs a day, with constant emails, and unexpected drop-ins from students. And I love that. I love a job that capitalizes on both my skills of organization/management and relationality. Despite the busyness of my work, I normally still watch parts of the Daily Show during lunch, take time to relax, and enjoy the barefoot walks to and from work. 

Maybe I'm drawn to feeling self-important, and having students value my thoughts and opinions (surprising that I like to share both of those!). But I also love seeing students transform through a year or two of mentoring. Through the 3 years I've supervised and mentored the student director, I've tried to strike the balance that I attempt with all my students: support and challenge. I support her where she's doing great, help supplement her where she needs help, but also push her and confront her desire to stay where she's at and to work on enhancing her skills in new ways. This is what the job has been for me too. I've been pushed and challenged beyond my own comfort zone, but also supported by an incredible community that loves me and cares for me.

This sounds like a lot of self-important BS. But it's more than that to me. I know I have skills that are a good match for the job, yet I know many people could do as good a job. It's just rewarding to be in a place where you can see people who didn't care about inclusive language turn into feminists (last year I had a student burst into my office yelling, "Keith, I think I'm a feminist now!!!"), or a white student sharing how difficult it is to process privilege, or a black student feeling comfortable enough with me to share a painful racialized incident, or another student of color challenge me into recognizing how connected I am to current elite power structures, despite my language saturated with "justice". I love that I also feel challenged and supported in my work. I have grown immensely in the 5 years I've been at Messiah. I'm sad to leave it, but I hope it has prepared me for what's to come.

Video (Fall 2013-Winter2014)

Another World (February 2014) by Luke

Every day I walk out my door up and over two soft hills, turn right and follow a short trail to a piece of ground tucked in among box elder, spicebush, maple and honeysuckle.  This is my sit spot.  For almost 5 months now I have returned to this spot daily with a simple objective- to watch and open my awareness to what is happening in this place.

 

I've been in other worlds like this throughout my life.  What I have never done is anchor myself to one particular spot, where I return every day.  This other world has been a safe place.  It is a place where I am sometimes startled, other times amazed.  Here I dance other dances.  I try to relate to individuals whose language I don't speak.

 

Some of the main characters I visit with in this world are Blue Heron, Box Elder, Pileated Woodpecker, Kingfisher, Squirrel, Lesser Celandine  and Deer.  I observe these characters in a way I never have before.  The repetition of my visits offers me the opportunity to notice patterns.  Who is where, when and why...Pileated Woodpecker likes to visit in the morning. He likes to dig into the aging maples.  Deer visits and browses the winter creeper vine but not too often.  Kingfisher is busy most of the day and loud.  Squirrel sleeps for days when it is too cold, but knows exactly where to dig through the snow when it comes time to eat again. Blue Heron has particular spots she returns to time and again.  Box Elder grows wherever it can and also breaks a lot.   Lesser Celandine will start to grow in December even between snow storms.  

 

Here I also meet myself.  I meet my moods, my thoughts, my fears, my energy.  I like this setting and approach to meditation where I am not trying to conquer anything or shut anything out.  I am not trying to silence or shut down my senses.  I am welcoming them and engaging them, focusing and shifting focus.  Filling rather than emptying.  

 

This world is the other world I'm trying to make not other.  There is much I don't know about it.  But some things I am starting to see.  And that is very nice.

Another World (February 2014)

A Video

The scene on the bike loosening the shirt near the neck struck me.

Another World (February 2014) by Joy

With routine days spent in such proximity, my daughter and I live in a unique world where a toddler and an adult inhabit the same space.  At times I’m overtaken by my connection to her- my firstborn.  Even though our contact is constant and overwhelming, I still want her close.  At night, when I wake scared (When despair for the world grows in me/and I wake in the night at the least sound/in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be –Wendell Berry), my first thought is to slip into her bed, cuddle close, imbibe the rhythm of her nighttime breath, and whisper thanks over and over and over for the moments I’ve had with her.  And I beg for more, for as many moments as we can have.  Sometimes I hold her so close I imagine absorbing her back inside me so that my body might again be her safe place where she is closer to me, and a bit more removed from that ‘outside’ world I find so hard to trust.

She dances around the house creating her own small worlds from blankets, discarded papers, stacked books and any old thing she imagines life into.  She talks through her every thought and I have to guess nothing about her ideas, fears, hopes or intentions.  I listen to her soliloquies and notice how she will weave in such little details of the day.  When I listen, I can hear what she’s learned and how she absorbs it all through play:

• Once, when I fix her toy with glue she pretends to break and repair household objects for several hours thereafter. 
• After a trip to the hospital and the pharmacy she carefully explains to a throng of dolls and stuffed animals that they should be sure to drink lots of water and juice so that they can feel better.
• I drop my phone in frustration grunting, “What the heck?!”  A few hours later she tells me in snotty frustration, “Mom, I have boogs.  What the heck?!”
• I can hear her arguing with Luke in the dining room and he tells her she’s ‘unbelievable’.  So she climbs the steps to the second floor to report, “Mom, I’m undeliebable”.

Always learning, repeating, asking, refining, testing.

Exasperating and illogical as her toddler world may be, I feel privileged to spend my days in and out of its periphery.  I can feel- it’s palpable- that in her world there is no pretense or hatred or dishonesty.  In her transparent curiosity, she is light to me.  She is love and hope and every good thing I long for in the adult world I generally inhabit.  She and her 30 lb ilk are beyond precious.  There is no word for it.  Sometimes I just think that if every person in the world would look a toddler in the eyes and listen and hear – Oh, how could they do any of the ungodly things that we do?  How could anyone do an ounce of evil to threaten all the shiny, hopeful, unblemished goodness of a tiny human who’s just piecing it all together?

There’s no war in those eyes.  No rape.  No industrial mayhem.  No slavery.  It’s a world of possibility.  I teach her, true.  But it’s no cliché to say that perhaps she is the true teacher here.

And yet daily I find myself faced with the task of letting her go (because surely she belongs to no one, not even me), of walking near her, but not an obstacle to her growth, independence or strength.  And worst (scariest, hardest?) of all, I must find some way to loose her into a world I do not trust with her.  Obviously she’ll meet countless loving, wonderful, art-ful others who will feed her soul and buoy her.  But what about that one or two or three who might mean her harm, or see her as a means to an end?

Oh world, let her live fully here.  Let her be free in as many ways that there are.  And let her shine through whatever darknesses lurk on her path.  Help her know herself, trust herself, love herself deeply.  Give her clarity and assurance.  Let her and her peers teach us all, for we need to inhabit their curious world more than we’ll ever acknowledge.

Another World (February 2014) by Josh W.

Who nose my world?

 

This world smells.  I could describe to you how to get from my house to the office merely by following your nose.  First, go straight down the path until you begin to sense the calming sandalwood trickling from the shop on the corner.  Turn right.  Go past the burnt popcorn smell.  Turn left once the aroma of stale animal urine and rotting flesh pierces your nose.  Go past the intoxicating fresh cardamom, cumin, and curry being ground by hand.  Continue on beyond the fishy, earthy smells that will be on your right.  Once you begin to choke on diesel fumes you’re nearly to the next turn.  But wait until you sense the loaf of bread fresh out of the oven to turn left.  Carry on and it will smell like an amusement park, you know, the old vomit and woodchips utilized to soak up the vomit smell, near that ride that goes upside down and backwards.  The diesel fumes will be back at this point, ignore it, just keep going straight.  Now you’re in for a treat.  Go past the pungent aroma wafting in your unassuming nostrils – it’s kind of like the stench of a hundred brutally used Porta-Potties after a well attended, undercooked meat serving, Indian wedding.  Don’t worry; you’re nearly there.  Turn right once the burnt popcorn odor reappears.  Left at the garlicky dal being cooked, and if it’s morning, cardamom and cinnamon will stimulate your olfactory bulbs.  Wander past the stink of scaled chicken skin, stale urine, and feces.  Finally, turn left at the diesel fumes.  And if you have a cold, then I guess you’ll just have to use a map.

 

Another World (February 2014) by Kate

I'm not really a writer, but here's a few things I can share with you all about my world right now:

This new place is not as I expected. I am different here, I spend my time differently. I care a lot about the quality of wood for the fire but not as much about my to do list for the day. I feel the gravity of our decision to come here, but I don't worry as much.

I love chopping wood and hanging the laundry, but I find dreaming and planning exhausting. I feel welcome in these woods and I've discovered that I don't mind stinkbugs. But I don't deal well with the cold.

I'm not at home. It feels like I'm living in someone else's house. ..someone tall and strong, and braver than me. I'm not sure where my home is. I had thought I would feel settled and this would feel like home by now. But I can see now that I'm here that it may take a long time. I suppose this is ok.

I have a lot of hopes for who I can be here and what I can do. But I think I need to go about it all gently. I feel most at home now with you all, dear friends. 

Another World (February 2014) by Jonathan

I was reflecting with a friend the other day that I inhabit many different worlds in which I am the only common denominator. This is not a great revelation, I realize, but rather a truism.... everyone has this same experience. Nonetheless, since I have people around me that are picture-takers, and a picture is worth a thousand words, I thought I'd share a bit about the world I'm in right now: Puerto Rico.

One of the highlights (as you might expect) of being home is that i get to hang out with my niece. She is 2 1/2, like puzzles and has a ear-piercing scream when she doesn't get her way. Here, Tío (Spanish for uncle) is cracking almonds with Amaiyah.

Its also been great to loaf around the house with my sister (Raquel, down from Harrisonburg) and my brother David (proud parent of the little face).

Puerto Rico is a colony of the US (we still have colonies?? WTF!) and has seen rapid societal changes in the past 100 years (like a lot of the world, I guess) My grandmother, at 93, has seen a lot of that. She told me while we were visiting this past weekend how she bought her first pair of shoes at 10 years old when she made enough money harvesting tabacco to buy them herself. She started first grade in school and dropped out when an American came to the classroom and she was terrified that the tall white man was going to eat her. That is the total of her formal education.

However, there are still a few ancient traditions that are fighting their death. A "parranda" is the Puerto Rican version of Christmas caroling where the neighbors gather and play traditional instruments (cuatro: the guitar-looking thing; güiro: the hollow gourd; maraca: you've seen The Mask) and sing folk music, sometimes terribly out of tune. The girl in the salmon shirt is my sister-in-law.

This man is my crazy uncle who, after a long professional career retired to a "traditional" life-style where he cooks over open fire and plows land with a team of oxen. You've probably heard me talk about him. Also, he looks just like my late grandfather did at that age.

Of course no trip home would be complete without letting my mother shower me with nice things and an off-season (It's winter!! Cant you tell?) trip to the beach.

If you care to know, ask me sometime about "becoming an adult" both in a family context and in a societal context (the last time I lived in PR I was 16). So there, 7,000+ word email! Wow, that is the longest email I even wrote!

Much love.