war photographers

I have been thinking a lot about how all I do here anymore is share videos, other people’s writings, random thoughts. The truth is I knew my writing would have to change, would have to evolve as we continue our path ever downwards. For awhile, I had a secret blog (just for real-life friends and family), which I thought would help. But it didn’t (plus, a secret blog is surprisingly hard to implement).

So this is our struggle. I am learning so much, and I want to share with everyone. This is a part of my personality, a part of how I was wired. But how much of what I am learning is tied to the lives of people, real flesh-and-blood and full of dignity people–people who you don’t know? The responsibility to portray nuanced and appropriate stories is a heavy mantle to bear. It is easier to shrug it off, and to be silent.

A bigger issue might be my own steep learning curve. It is probably not the time for me to be spouting off any deep thoughts or proposed answers or solutions or diatribes or rants; I am still struggling to catch my footing, lest I crush the path or fall off altogether. This is a very good reason to keep quiet, I think.

A while ago, back in Portland, I was ranting about people taking pictures and using them to “raise awareness” (or money). This is a huge topic, I know, and I have some very big thoughts on it. And one of my friends quietly told me a story of a war photographer, and how he justified taking pictures of people in the aftermath (and in the midst of) truly horrifying situations. the photographer said something along the lines of how he felt confident that publishing these photos for the world was the right thing to do, as long as the best interest of his subjects was his intention. he said people knew, would look his lens square and straight, because they trusted that these pictures would move people, would bring the world closer to them and their reality. he got permission from them, from their eyes and their words (where language allowed). and he used his responsibility wisely, to show the truth of the situation.

Thank goodness I can’t take a picture for the life of me (and it most surely would not be welcomed in my neighborhood, anyway). But I do like to write, and this is where I have been stumped: what is my role in all of this.

For the truth is that there is a war going on, all the time. Poverty in America is intense, complicated, fraught with both joys and casualties all the time. And by and large, we don’t know about it, and would be fine with keeping it that way. In some ways I feel like we need a war photographer or two around here; but something tells me it would take a whole lifetime to earn the sort of trust necessary to share in the task of telling stories.

I am only two months in. For now, I can only share me. But even that has its problems. If I tell you that I have been terrified, several times since moving here, you would only see a small part of my life. If I told you of the difficulties, you might not get the whole picture. Already, in these short months, I have found myself asking questions and dealing with situations (most often: should I call the cops or not? ) that are pretty foreign to me. This is real, of course, but this is only a small part. Far more often I feel bored, or lonely, or tired, or blessed, or cheerful, or industrious, or crafty, or hungry. And on the flip-side, there is the blessing of being in this difficult place. I cannot even begin to process how to go writing about these miracles. For they aren’t the ones I thought I was going to tell; it turns Christ wanted to heal me and change me, and draw me to himself.

There is the tension of being “in ministry”. We tend to minimize, or maximize, our situations depending on the context. More often than not people working on the margins tend to the former, perhaps out of respect for their neighbors or a misguided attempt at holy stoicism. But bottling up feelings never did anybody any good; the field is littered with burn outs and drop outs who may have been saved had they spoken of their troubles long ago. This is just one conundrum after another, people.

So, let’s wrestle through this. I have learned so much from war photographers, from biographies and stories of people living the kingdom out on the ground. If you know any good thoughts on how to best share our experiences in the margins, please share with all of us. Let’s make this a conversation, shall we? 

The image comes from National Geographic and the story behind it is stunning. Go here to read it. 

one day

yesterday we moved into our new apartments, the place we have set our eyes on since we visited in June.

it was a day. due to circumstances it was basically just us moving, me packing and scrubbing, the husband carrying and loading and driving and unloading, time and time again. the baby either cried or unpacked or sat happily with her sesame friends, and i felt proud and exhausted and disheartened all at the same time. moving alone does this to a body.

we have long said we are on a journey of downward mobility and now our mettle is being tested. paper-thin walls, smoky hallways, bent-up burners that make it hard to cook, doors with holes in them, no dishwashers or fancy things here. we are on the ground floor, our windows just above the earth outside, which enchants the 2-year old as squirrels run by.  but the building is old, heated by water and radiators, no controls to be found in the apartment. there was a cold snap, and as a result, the apartment was sweltering. i thought of the book i so often read the baby, and i realized we could easily have a green house up in here. but i unlocked the windows and let the biting air in, the sounds of the city coming along with it. i wonder why everyone else has bars in their windows but ours don’t. i shut and lock them as we leave.

we went out to get a bite, because we realized we didn’t own things like ice-cube trays or trash cans, and we were tired. people thronged in the corners, shouting and laughing, we walked by quickly, hurriedly. i felt afraid, truth be told.

back in the apartment, i can hear the neighbors. hear them talking about the new people moving in, wondering why we are here. they are not happy, they don’t understand. a couple of weeks ago another little family moved in upstairs, people who look and act like us. a bunch of freaks, the neighbors said, and i crouched like a rabbit, frozen, caught where i was not supposed to be. the thoughts i never wanted spoken aloud, right outside my door.

and i get it, why would i expect people to be happy just because i have shown up?

in the dark, i had many thoughts about the people and places we left, the support systems we had in place back in Portland, the way we had been invited into the lives of others. what hubris is this, to try and insert ourselves into a place that feels to me as foreign as Timbuktu, everybody else speaking the same language of survival, me trying to speak the language of the soul. but it’s survival time for us, right now, and we could stand to learn a lot.

we shut our windows, sweated the night through and through. the bed we bought broke. the baby woke up at 3, and then at 5 (this time for good). the husband left for a job interview, because we need money. the baby and i took a brisk walk through the leaves, some of the first people to wander in the morning. and it felt so different, and a tiny part of it started to feel good.

we have been here one day.

my week in review

what up, week? this hasn’t been a very easy one, has it? first there was the car that broke down on the husband’s birthday, at the nice bagel shop that we drove to (we wanted to pretend for a moment we were back in portland, that life was familiar and safe). we arrived to a smoking car, green ooze spilling everywhere. while we tried to figure out what to do on a sleepy sunday morning, i set down the diaper bag on a table. we left, took our sweet time driving the 3 miles back to the apartment, stopping to take walks so the car didn’t overheat. the toddler protested, cried some big fat tears. we finally made it back. we realized the diaper bad was no longer with us; calls to the bagel shop resulted in nothing. it was gone, taken, my wallet and my husband’s ipod the only real things of value in it (and the humor is not lost on me, that our stuff got stolen when we drove to the “nice” part of town for a little escapism). happy birthday, baby.

then there was the week of meeting new people, being exhausted by small talk and never really knowing how safe you can be, still be chafed by how little you know about this town, this community, the place you are now committed to (o acedia, you fought us hard this week, always dreaming of good times past, of alternatives to our present reality). there was the night i woke up in a panic, seized by a faceless terror, and could only think to pray from the book of revelations, some bit of holy truth about the blood of the lamb and the word of my testimony, repeating it over and over, telling things unseen to be gone. and if this sounds crazy, let me assure you that it is. our safety nets having been flung aside, the cracks in the world are starting to appear. but so is the gold, underneath.

there was the radiator in the car, of course, and the money to fix it. there were the carbon monoxide alarms that went off in the apartment, scaring the baby half to death, the fire department coming to check everything out, the night i thought for sure we would all die in our sleep. we slept restless, not very long, the sounds of the city reaching up to us and always reminding us to be wary, on guard.

and then there was yesterday. i got up and went downtown saw a little bit of a conference that was geared towards the very thing we moved here to do: to build up neighborhoods, to reconcile the divisions in our churches, to go to the forgotten parts of the cities and stay. and i got to hear john perkins give a bible study. does it really matter what it was about? he was beaten half to death by police officers just for being black, for loving peace and justice. and jesus told him to love those oppressors, that they themselves were bound and enslaved by racism, how it had affected them as well. i would listen to anything that man has to say, for he knows how to love, knows how to endure. it rather put things in perspective, really.

i saw all those young people with a passion for community development (and brown boots and scarves, evidently), drinking their coffee, taking copious notes. i felt detached, frumpy, only there for an hour or two and not succeeding in relaxing. i narrowed my eyes at all those dreamers, thousands of them stretched out in front of me, and i thought: well do it now, honeys. do it all, while you still have the brain capacity to think beyond the thousands of mundane life tasks that take over once you have children (it may or may not have been a rough week for a certain 2-year old in our house).

and even as i think these thoughts, i love those dear little children and their heart for something different. and i see, scattered throughout the crowd, people who have been doing it for twice as long as i have, married couples holding hands, living this different way together. and i have come and i have been encouraged by all of it, the naiveté and the experience and the excitement and the burn-out of it all. and i walk out the doors, because you always have to at some point, and the work has already begun again.

it’s been a long week, hasn’t it? and it’s only one out of 52.

The world’s crankiest monk

I’m the world’s crankiest monk right now, cloistered away from all my dear ones, irritable from  taking a big leap to follow God and landing in stillness and isolation.

I’m a religious devotee with a crazy two-year old, trying to prayer walk for the neighborhood as my child shrieks every other second or so (stroller! mama hold you! walk! WALK! no no no, stroller! mama hold you! mama hold you! MAMA HOLD YOOOOOOOUUUU!).

I meditate on the pizza boxes on the ground, the razor in the plants, the boys fighting, the people talking in a language that sounds like music to me, rusting playgrounds, people bent on getting by, shy smiles at the grocery store. I meditate on how strange it is to be in a city where you don’t know how the shopping carts work, ruminate on the simple disorientation that comes from not knowing what the radio stations are, or where you can buy cheap and free range-eggs. I meditate on how I wish I knew how to do all this better; to sit and be silent and marvel. Instead it is all rushing by in a series of early mornings, wandering around the city, getting lost and crying, slowly starting to buy spices, getting the pots and pans out.

Fingers urging to write, head spinning with ideas for classes, programs, events, ways to help and help and help. But the Abbot says no, first we wait. We don’t wait in silence (for that is near impossible with the toddler), but we are trying not to drown in the clutter of surviving, either. We are just trying to listen, through all the noise. When you take away the church buildings, where is your tribe? When you take away your parents and sisters and grandparents, where is your family? When you take away people who like the same food or music or God, who are your friends?

I am not making a very good monk right now, but I am trying to sit in my place and listen for the answers.

time for the sentimental last post.

I spent several hours this afternoon sitting in sweaty apartments, the walls covered in assortments of pictures of tigers, bucolic mountain scenes, gurus, homework assignments. The air smelled like spices and oil, seeping into my clothes. I sweat, I am forced to eat food, forced to watch my toddler shove multiple cookies in her mouth as women coo and laugh and pinch her cheeks. The sweat trickles down my legs and I laugh and joke and eventually say goodbye to my neighbors, the people I was supposed to be ministering to, the people who ended up being dear heart friends. I tried to tally up the number of such hours I have spent in similar apartments, stuffy no matter what time of the year, the hours I have spent in comfortable silence, where I discovered worlds hidden away from the glossy America we all like to believe exists. And I can’t believe it has been 8 years since I found these places hidden away, where I found my place in these worlds within worlds.

//

I had one last slumber party with the Somali girls I have known the longest, we watched terrible shows on netflix (Dinotopia) we ate pizza and chips and grapes and oranges and topped it off with birthday-cake flavored oreo ice cream. We put cheap, glittery fake nails on and lived it up for a night. We woke up grumpy, sleepy, not ready for goodbyes. As we were preparing to drive them home, my mom asked if she could pray for the girls. They said, ok, sure, mumbled it with downcast eyes. She prayed to God, prayed to Allah, bridging the gap like we are always wanting. She prayed for the next year in school, for Manoi starting high school, for Abey in her last year in the middle one. I watched the girls, watched them shift uncomfortable, watched them be prayed over. In the car, taking them home, the hubs asked what they thought of the prayer.

Manoi thought long and careful. Oh, it was ok, she said. It was nice. But my life right now . . . it just isn’t very good.

I wanted to cry, want to hug and protect and hate that I have to say goodbye. But instead of losing it completely, I felt at peace. I have known them for the majority of their lives, and I will see them again. We are family now, we are in this together despite distance, language, religion. They have changed me, completely. In a way, I am moving because of them. I am moving for them.

//

I wanted to write an ode to Portland, but how could I do that? The city that got into my skin, crawling with people both consumed with the present and with those who cannot let go of the past. I will miss the food carts, the fountains, the co-ops and farmers markets, the coffee (o! the coffee), the riot of colors in the fall. But the things I miss the most will be here for me to come back to: my beautiful, chaotic church, my fearfully talented and kind friends, my family who is my life and who has made me who I am.

As I was leaving the apartment complex where we have spent these past four years, I wanted to stop and take it all in. Let the memories and the smells and the comfort and the failure wash over me, take me down the path of my life. But there isn’t time for that now, and it doesn’t even feel very necessary. They were just the apartments that changed everything about me, and I am continuing on in that journey.

And as much as I wanted to, I realized I just can’t say goodbye yet. I’ll just say see you soon, and leave it at that.

On being missional, and on leaving (oh, the irony).

Oooh, getting all fancy and theological over at A Deeper Church today, writing about the weirdly popular word “missional”. I have read arguments about how this word has icky connotations (which it does, totes) but it also seemed to miss the mark of all the people I had observed who were living out this life instead of writing treatises about it. The people I know who would be classified by the church as “missional” are not colonizers. They are mustard seeds, ground down in the dirt, trampled by the city and its inhabitants. They are a pinch of yeast, spreading slowly through the bread, doing their work with little to no programs or specialized plans (hence, no recognition). Most of my favorite people are unglamorous  hilarious, hardworking, celebratory, messy people. They are missional.

I can only hope to be one of them.

You can read the piece here.

As a side note, in several days I will be immersed in the Moving Tornado. I don’t know when I will have access to consistent internet again, so who knows when I will blog again. Things have worked out to such a degree that me, the hubs, one of my besties, AND my sister are caravanning out to the exotic midwest, so it is seeming more and more like a grand party/adventure. This is helping.

It is also helping that I am completely emotionally shut down. Apartment fell through? No problem. Transmission acting funny? Whatevs. Saying goodbye to people I have lived/worked with for 8 years? Ok, that’s fine.

Sigh. I do think at some point during the drive out I am going to put some Steven Curtis Chapman in on the ol’ car stereo and sob my guts out.

I’m divin’ in, guys.

I cannot even begin

to describe the way things are over here. As most of you know, our little fam joined a mission organization and we are relocating to the exotic midwest, to immerse ourselves in several countries within our great country, to continue down the rabbit hole of working with Muslim African refugees, to be changed into people who care more about our neighbors than we do a 401k, to live in community with other Christians who have been doing this a lot longer than we and have and who have not let the seeds of bitterness take root, we are going because we ourselves are the mission field, we need Jesus so much to pull us out of this morass of the pursuit of happiness, which has come at a great cost to all of us.

 

In our other not-online lives, we have spent the past month living with my parents, having coffee and dinner and drinks with so many of our beautiful and beloved friends, church family, real-and-true blood family. My grandparents came up for a week, which was good and sorrowful, both of them in poor health, my grandma unable to find so many of the words she wanted to use. Saying goodbye was very, very hard. My sister and her husband and baby are coming today, and we will all be in the house together, a ramshackle mess of love and expectation and laughter and loss.

 

We have been working, in our own weird ways, to raise financial support so we can live this life we are being called to, and it has been kicking my butt in so many ways. The vulnerability of this position has not been lost on me, and it has been a struggle to communicate what we are doing, to ask for help, to be a gracious recipient. We are currently at around 30% support, but we are leaving in a week anyways. I have no idea what is going to happen, and I am not lying when I say this one is rather the least of my worries right now.

 

I signed a book contract yesterday, with a lovely new publishing company (more on that later). They gave me a year to write a book, and this also is contributing to my vision of the great blank canvas that is life after next week, a life in which everything has changed.

 

The next few days are filled with goodbyes, which can drive even the most devout to drink ( . . . coffee, of course). Saying goodbye to friends and family has already loomed large, but I am also saying goodbye to the people I thought were my ministry all along but who turned out to be some of my very best friends.

 

A week from today I will be driving with my sister across the country (the husband and the baby will be flying–with my mom along for the ride as well). Our transmission is acting funny. The check engine light is on.

 

So there it is, in a nutshell. I have had dreams about tidal waves/tsunamis over taking me for the past several nights and I just looked it up on the internets (so it must be true). According to several websites these types of dreams means that I have a lot of emotions that I am pushing to the side, and that I am on the brink of a big life change.

 

Um, yeah. You could describe my life like that. I can feel the tsunami coming.

I am just not ready to face it quite yet.

coping mechanisms

Transition is hard on everyone.

We were in the car yesterday, on the way to partake of some deliciousness at the food carts (pizza, fried pie). The baby is screaming at the top of her lungs, crying, inconsolable. Snacks, stuffed bunnies, water, hands to hold–nothing is helping. The food carts are far away. My husband puts on some Ke$ha, sings along at the top of his lungs. I pull out my book (the Cloister Walk by Kathleen Norris, which I am savoring) trying to immerse myself in reflections on the Psalms while around me the cacophony of sound is truly deafening. We are all trying to cope, in our own ways, right now.

My husband looks over at me, over the crying, the Ke$ha, the calm words in my hand. “This is kind of funny,” he says, meaning the ways we are all coping. “You should put this on your blog or something”.

//

My new post at McSweeney’s is up (also, can I just geek out for a moment and say that Jesse Eisenberg is also writing for McSweeney’s and his piece came out today too? So in my dream world that makes us writer friends/bffs. And yes, it is that Jesse Eisenberg).

Nostalgia is such a tricky thing. I knew I would have to write about it at some point, I just never knew it would be so much about me. In my grad school I actually had to take a couple of Seminary classes, and one was on World Religions (and friends, I have taken soooooo many World Religions classes that I was pretty miffed I had to do another one). But this class turned out to be great, where we actually listened to experts from various religions come and share themselves with us (imagine that!). The class also focused on the Palestinian/Israeli conflict as a model to explore all modern religious conflict. I wrote a paper on how nostalgia has been used to convert people on both sides of the Palestinian/Israeli conflict into violent forms of nationalism. It was a wordy, researched-based piece, but the results stuck with me. Telling stories matters. We need to make sure the stories we are telling ourselves do not revolve just around our shared history, but the stories of the work God has done in us.

I also found that one of the best ways to subvert violent, nostalgia-based rhetoric was to focus on telling the stories of those not in the majority of power: mainly, the women and the children. This is something I think we all can do, right where we are. All of us have the means to interact with those on the fringes of power, and to help tell those stories. This is one of the ways we can lesson violence, and stop allowing ourselves to be convinced that we are the only right thinkers in the world.

So, what stories are you compelled to seek out and to tell?

bye, kitty kitty.

Do you know how much stuff fits into a Subaru wagon? I was a bit optimistic about the whole thing. Turns out, hardly anything will be making the trek to the midwest with us (side note, turns out I have really strange priorities: large painting of a giant squid must go, but my kitchenaid goes blithely into storage. We are taking books, clothes, and lots and lots of strange artwork). I don’t know what is going to happen when we get there. I have a lot of anxiety about it, actually, because my husband and I are rather comitted to buying things second hand (because fair trade is expensive, plus we are taking vows of simplicty) and in our new neighborhood bed bugs is a problem. So . . . this should be an adventure.

But this is not what I wanted to write about. I wanted to stake a claim on this little corner of the internet and say goodbye to Huckleberry, the world’s grumpiest and belligerent and strangely soulful cat:

Enjoy your new home, your farm in the country. May the mice be plentiful and the barn nice and dry.

You were our first muse, our practice baby, our love kitten, our cantankerous flatmate. We will never forget you.

 

You were a really good kitty.

 

[now excuse me whilst I go cry my eyes out].

moving on.

I just sold my djembe drum to a nice hippy man via craigslist. I want to play it cool here, but I felt rather teary. I remember exactly when I bought that drum–right after YWAM, influenced by all the percussionists I met in India–at the music store in downtown Portland. How I proudly carried it everywhere. How I played at churches, in small groups, with college-aged kids in a large circle on somebody’s lawn. How I loved blending in, how confident I was of the beat. I remember listening to non-mainstream worship ensembles and thinking this stuff is legit. It wasn’t polished, or perfect. It was joyous, it was a howl. The djembe to me sounded like the psalms.

I carted that drum around all my wanderings, but here is the memory I remembered tonight: I was in Portland, years later, at yet another Bible college. I was older, wiser, but still wanted to fit in. I asked the pretty worship leader, a brunette with a sharp tongue, if they ever needed a percussionist. “I play the djembe”, I said, not wanting to sound too braggy. We were in the cafe, and I had approached her. She looked me up and down, said “thanks” and “I’ll think about it”. She smiled at me, but I was already feeling like I had made the wrong move somehow. I sat in the corner to study. She talked loudly to her friends. “Oh, the djembe is so five years ago. I can’t even imagine!” I know she wanted me to hear her say it, and I did. And it was my first real sense that the world moves on ahead of you, finding God in ever more loud ways, when you just want to sit in the grass and play your drum.

I put it in my closet, and have rarely touched it since.

//

We are currently selling all of our possessions. We are taking what fits in a subaru wagon, and nothing else. We are committing to lives of simplicity (plus, our stuff isn’t worth the price to move it). Our stuff is overwhelming, scrounged from thrift stores, found in alleys, painted and glued and glittered (I do love me some glitter). I sold our backpacks today, remembered the months in Europe, China, Turkey. I don’t know when we will ever travel like that again. I will sell our TV, our glorious 1960s orange hide-a-bed, I will send our cantankerous cat to a friendly farm in the country (and trust me, I will sob my guts out).

I, who pride myself on not buying into all this crap, have bought a lot of crap. And it turns out that maybe we hang onto our stuff as a way to hang onto our past selves. I am having a hard time getting rid of things right now, because I am having a hard time understanding who I am. For a long time, my worth was measured by my musical ability (playing bass in a Christian punk band, folk jam sessions on the guitar, playing drums for the youth group, the djembe at the Megachurch). But that part of me is done, for now, crowded out by other more important things.

I can only take one box of books, and it is messing with me. How much of my identity I so badly want to be tied to my mind, my words. And this makes me realize how fragile all of this really is. How taking a vow of simplicity might mean a renewed vigor to be poor in spirit, not just in possessions.

But be honest, here. If you could only fill up a rusty subaru wagon, what would you take? What would you leave behind?