the bottom of the barrel

so i am still a little hit or miss working with stainless steel cookware - i was raised on cast iron and non-stick oddly enough - and last night i was scrubbing all the seasoning and yumminess that should have been on the chicken i cooked off the bottom of a skillet when i had a flashback to my first day in the feeding program at jubilee. i was with a team of wonderful southern women and we had made our way into the village with 5 gallon buckets of rice and bean sauce, and huge kivet filled with an assortment of plates bowls and spoons. there is a unique math to feeding programs, divide however much food you have as many ways as you want and it will always equal less than the number of mouths at the door. as such, we feed the youngest, the sickest, the ones with the orangest hair first. with the exception of a few, most of the kids do a pretty good job of putting themselves in this order, big brothers feeding younger siblings first or giving their food away to a sicker child all together. anyway, on this day, i was crowd control while the other women served the plates. even after careful counting we still came up several plates short. i had already told these children to come in, that we had food for them! so in desperation i went to the buckets wondering how we could have estimated so poorly. what i found there was oh. so. profound.
the scorched rice.
it had never occurred to these wonderful southern women, even in a dirty shed of a room filled with naked children sitting on the ground eating off dirty plates with their hands, to serve overcooked rice...and i don't mean this to disparage these ladies at all, of course to them what an insult that would be to anyone at their table!
but it gets better...not only are we talking about children who will get one meal a day (hopefully) but in haiti, like in many cultures where they eat a lot of rice, the scorched rice at the bottom of the pot is like licking the bowl, like the middle brownie, the best cut of the meat, the swirl off the ice cream cone...whatever you are into...its the best part. of course the ladies had no way of knowing this, but its the rice haitian kids would fight over in their own homes.

lately i feel like i have been scraping the bottom of the bucket in a lot of areas of my life. this moment at the sink reminded me of the lesson i learned watching kids devour burnt rice. it may feel like i've barely got anything left, and like what i have managed to scrape up is too ruined or embarrassing to offer. but beyond it being better than nothing...it might be just what someone is hoping for.

crawling is hard

last spring i met a girl who should have been learning to run. instead she could barely sit herself up, gravity dragging her slight frame towards the earth...her bones bearing the weight of an unknowable amount of pain. she wanted to be held all the time...and to leave her in a crib was an unbearably pitiful undertaking. but we knew to cradle her constantly would aid the weakness in her who would welcome the death that hovered around her...so we urged her ever so gently to move, to reach, to crawl...the first time i actually forced myself to walk away from the tiny pleadings that would have come forth as wailing from a different mouth...something extraordinary happened. i was called in to see what my baby "had done". i expected a mess by a healthier toddler in the house but instead i found my new little love making her way up the three stairs into the hall that lead to my room...she had crawled almost 50 feet already.

and do you know what i did?

i clapped, and went for my camera, and danced and celebrated.
but she didn't want pictures or applause, she wanted me to pick her up.
she had made all this effort to beg for what she needed and i stood there and clapped and snapped digital pictures. what a fool i was. how rejected and humiliated she must have felt in those precious moments that i took to honor the moment for myself or at least in MY way instead of for her only. i will never forget what it felt like to pick her up and sit holding her on those stairs. i will never look at that photo without some bittersweetness that it exists. i will also never forget what it felt like later to get on the floor and crawl every day so that she would crawl with me.

let me just say there is a reason we learn how to walk.

crawling is hard.

not just that, it is limiting. it keeps us low and vulnerable. exposed and defenseless. it is awkward and humbling. crawling is hard. it is all these things that motivate us to conquer the precarious idea of balancing on two legs and moving freely about the planet. walking may be scary but it is a change of pace and persective that crawling teaches us to value immensely.

during an exercise in authentic movement for class i found myself on the floor crawling. i haven't done that since before rosetaina died in july. the flood of tears and ache that always seem to be poised like a wave about to crash do just that, pressing my face to the wooden floor. it was here that i first imagined what it would feel like if someone had chosen to mark this moment with a picture instead of an embrace. it was here i finally embraced not just the diligence but the humility and desperation of her efforts that day.

and here that i embraced that of my own efforts of late.

i have let life knock me down and i can't seem to get back up. all i can really do is crawl.

and crawling is hard.

sand and stars and parachutes

everyone should get the chance to run down the beach at midnight with cold sand between their toes and a sea of stars above them swallowing up the sound of the waves floating a huge parachute behind them on the wind like a cape...like a train...like wings. its magical.

p.s. hiding under the parachute and fooling passersby into thinking you are a big rock is pretty fun too.

keeping up

so i live on the side of a small mountain/large hill....i don't know...its made of rock and you can't drive over it...being from ga i don't really have the skill to classify such things well yet...anyway...at some point when luke (my giant moose of a dog) and i are walking the trails in the woods he always gets really far ahead of me and i lose sight of him...once i start to turn around and head back i always whistle and call for him and try to get him to come "get with the program" ....and every single time as i walk back wondering when he is going to catch up he inevitably pops up in front of me somehow...he has been following alongside me the whole time, just off the trail where i wasn't aware of him...but when i call for him he always comes, even if it means he has to backtrack...and even though HE was not the one who was "off track"...and he will stay right with me until he senses that i am not really concerned anymore and then he will head back to traveling his way...hoping i will follow for the adventure but if i just stick to the trail he keeps up with me in his own way until i am looking for him again....
tell me there isn't a sermon in that.

so i took a diving lesson

for those of you who don't know (and therefore must be quite confused as to why i haven't been around...which makes me wonder why you haven't called...:) i am not just back in the art studio drywalling something...i am in graduate school studying dance/movement therapy. well this is what happened last week in class...

we were studying a pioneer of the field who used a lot of imagery and so we were doing an exercise where we would move as different types of water to see what kind of feelings that produced and then we went a step further to explore moving as and with water in connection with how we feel about our situations right now, particularly in relation to being in school, etc....well for those that i am here you know i made the decision pretty quickly and i came up here with some grandmommie's car, some summer clothes and flip flops, a big yellow dog, and faith that if i showed up god would to and work out all those minor details...like where to live and how to pay for all this...oh, and i had a machete too...

since then there have been some setbacks that left me wavering a little in my confidence that i did in fact belong here, that i did need to follow my dreams even if it cost more than i felt like i was worth at the moment...

so back to the water...i immediately felt the need to not be the water in my movement but to dive into the water...then i laid on the floor and let my self sink to the bottom...after a while of imagining myself completely immersed i had the sensation of slowly rising to the top...so slowing that i was almost unaware of it until i realized that i felt like i was floating on top...i even did a few backstrokes!

the next step was to get into groups and talk about our experience from our own perspectives and then to explore it from a D/MT perspective and what we might do with it if a client had shared these movement experiences with us...

i immediately related my desire to dive with the fact that i have recently realized that i have to really press into and commit to this experience in some ways that i have not yet if it is going to be useful at all...i can't waver in my owning not only of its value but of my freedom and ability and desire to see it through. there was a reason i came here...a really good one...and if i have big dreams then i have to make big investments to see them realized....so on and so forth...

what i didn't realize until we were discussing it is that i have never physically dived..dove..doven..whatever into anything before - i never learned how.

so when my teacher asked what i might do with that therapeutically i said...i should learn how to dive!

and then i actually did.

it just so happened that i would be visiting someone who teaches kids how to swim...so i commissioned her help in my little breakthrough...

we started with the kiddie dive squatting at the edge and i learned the basic rules of keeping your arms over your ears and knees bent...before the day was over i graduated to a standing dive and for a big finish (with some coaxing/peer pressure from two wicked cool redheaded boys, a muffy, and my "swim coach") i went twice off the block! it was a small thing...and it was amazing.

i felt totally exposed and awkward standing there, i was scared, i felt a potential for FAILING that i have never felt about jumping into a pool or anything else. but actively taking my feet off the board, going into the water head and hands first, coming through the water and out so DELIBERATELY...yeah, it was extremely hard for me. and it felt really really good.

enter the metaphoric learning that resulted...

i can jump into anything and i am even pretty good at it...and also at the leap of faith kind of stuff...and i do think that is super important to be able to do...but when we jump our head and arms are at the back end of it...and with them our awareness and deliberateness in a way...and even if we land hard we still land with our feet (and maybe our bum)...diving is a whole different thing...it has a direction and intention that is totally different...and it makes us WAY more vulnerable. we really have to mean it.

i think this season of my life...and most of the ones to come after that are going to require a lot of diving.

i want to get really good at diving.

thanks brittany.

i will no more trade the complexity of who i am for a false peace

i was always different. i used to fight that and try to fit in...oh how cliche to even say...but i didn't and i secretly didn't really want to so i was never very good at it. so over time, and through some really beautiful friendships, i have seen the inside me and the outside me look more and more like the same lady. it has been nice...someone said that my inner hippie has finally emerged...maybe so.
but i think that doesn't say it all. and i am discovering how important that is...because i had this idea that truly being myself would make things so much more simple.
and sometimes it does.
but sometimes it doesn't.
making peace with that reality...even more so...understanding the VALUE of that reality...is kind of hard....
i have this delusion that i am so simple. and i like the idea. but the truth is i am not...
but i am discovering that might be okay...that might be a good thing. it is like the difference in juice and wine. i like juice. juice is simple, and healthy, and lovely. but this summer i became sure that after a lifetime of never being interested in alcoholic beverages that i should start drinking wine. at least try it. i had some theories as to why but i don't think they were the whole story. after drinking some wine (with and without mountain dew mama kati) this is what i have discovered...

wine it isn't as easy to drink but its flavor is much richer
wine has a totally different and more immediately noticeable effect on the body
wine usually takes longer to produce
wine almost has layers of taste to it
wine isn't for everyone
wine can't go back to being juice
wine can satisfy in smaller amounts
wine costs more

i could go on but, in essence, wine is complicated. but its complexities are what make it so sought after. you can imagine where i have taken the above in the metaphor...but basically...becoming juice is a roughly automatic effect of being the liquid in a fruit...becoming wine, especially good wine, is an art.
there is of course a place for both at the table, the juice and the wine...the simple and the complex. one is not more needed than the other...nor should one replace the other...and that is the beauty of it. the moments when we find ourselves refreshingly simple are as valuable, but not necessarily more so, than the moments that we are at our most intricate.
life can be simple even if i am complicated...
and maybe i have been juice long enough...i am not going sour...i am becoming wine...

so i walked into the woods today...

and pondered this idea (not an original idea exactly)....

what if the time we spend waiting on answers from god are not just his way of forcing us to exercise faith but him TRUSTING us with his SILENCE .... his faith in us to NOT HEAR and still believe...we say that a great indicator of a healthy and intimate relationship is the ability to sit in silence with one another...what if his silence is not just him challenging me and inviting me to something more but HONORING me with something more...