casey stories

yoga in a crooked room

2012-02-05T10:39:00.000-08:00

my life lately has been consumed by stories...stories that were so important, so hard, so beautiful, so funny, so sad, so real...and so surreal...but despite all their value and their effect on my life...they aren't my stories to tell. so i have been coming here with a full heart and only producing a blank page...i have filled other spaces...canvases...phone calls...skillets and baking dishes...but i realized i have been very still lately and that if i am going to live the life i have chosen...the life i love...it was time to make more room inside the spaces of me...

"..the time had come for the witness to move once more.." -some DMT and AM genius

so i have started moving. without the benefit of keys to a dance studio, or a college campus where i had access to a dance space, or a climate where moving outside doesn't require expansiveness impeding layers...i started moving in my little red nook (my upstairs apartment in south troy - south troy against the world!)

thing about my apartment...its crooked.

after a number of late night revisions i pretty much have my furniture and my art supplies fashioned within the space to account for the slant and in such a way that things aren't rolling around or falling over...including me in my day to day activities...but this kind of moving proved to be a bit of a different story.

i think for a while this crookedness is part of why i was so still here..i was somehow conscious that the off center shape of my space was going to reveal something about me...i assumed it would highlight my own off centeredness...my own weaknesses...my own misshapen spaces...

eventually i came to a place where i was so crowded inside there was no room for a deep breath and i knew it was time to stretch, to realign, and to rediscover the spaces in me that i had allowed to shrink with disregard. i simply needed the room.

i put on the mandala cd from this wonderful band www.facebook.com/MomentaryProphets and started with a familiar yoga sequence. at first the less than square specs of my art room proved to be very much in the way and i was drawn out of my body into my head when my fingers would hit the parts of the ceiling or i would loose my footing on the tilt. discouraging thoughts emerged that i just might not be able to do this very helpful thing i know how to do for myself in the space i call home. that somehow the centuries of movement tradition that had served so many were somehow inaccessible to me because my environment was less than ideal.

almost in a gesture of defeat i let go of the yogic form and relaxed into a stretch that just felt really good. one that felt solid and powerful on this unsolid feeling floor. one that still felt like a stretch but also felt very possible. without really being aware of it i fell into a new sequence, one that was unlike anything i had done in a class as a student or anything i had taught to students in a class as a teacher. i didn't abandon the forms i knew but instead of trying to recreate them i connected to the essence of why i learned them..what they were designed to invite and encourage my body to do. to expand, to shift. to twist. to open. to close. to lift. to lower. to release. to hold. to let go. to be.

i shifted my trust from the form itself back to my own body, trusting it to know how to use all my knowledge, experiences, and even the space around me in the way that would be most right. for. me.

without having to think or plan or figure or struggle i found myself immersed in a seamless flow of movement that both challenged and soothed me...one where the slanting ceiling served as a perfect place to lean for greater opening of my heart center and core and where the incline of the floor allowed for more consideration of an old injury in my left hip while giving me the fullest and most effective stretch possible.

weakness and strength, good and bad, right and wrong, hard and easy, these were no longer meaningful descriptors. there were no categories or dichotomies to separate out the parts of me or the world around me. all things in that moment became simply facets of my reality that had to be fit together in whatever way worked for the good...whether that fit had a recognizable shape or name or even an explanation couldn't have mattered less.

so this is the story that is mine in all that is going on in my world. the details don't really matter, the message for me right now is that i don't have to fix it, i don't have to start it, or stop it,i don't have to change it, i don't have to understand it or figure it out. i just have to keep moving in all of it. moving according to the rhythm deepest inside of me even when that creates dances that i have never done or seen before.

it is not for me to war against the imperfection of this space that is our world, or to hide from it, but to step down into its very cracks to find the spaces for movements we never imagined possible and to lean into its jutting surfaces to gain momentum for leaps and stretches we once thought were too far. maybe the condition of my feet mean i will never be a ballerina, but maybe their odd shape is perfect for sliding into those cracks and blazing a trail for what will fill those cracks and bring wholeness.

only the dance between the imperfections of our world and the weaknesses of our own being, set to the music of love and faith and courage, allows the inconceivable work of a holy Choreographer to take the stage.

"and we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God..."

my side of town

2012-01-22T22:47:00.000-08:00

in haiti i love washing my clothes by hand...outside...among friends and neighbors...in the warm sunshine...sometimes even in a river...its lovely....

however, my bathtub in upstate ny doesn't have the same ambiance and i admit that i am thankful for the laundromat option.

when i moved to troy i started out at the bright and shiny one up near the bridge heading out of town, the one in one of those awkwardly unnecessary strip mall setups with too much parking, a tanning salon, and a recruiting office, the one recommended to me by co-workers.

later i happened upon one up the hill a little west of there, the one near a really great goodwill, a decent grocery store, and oddly enough an even fancier tanning salon. this one had more traffic and more bells and whistles, and more folding tables...and don't forget the really great goodwill store.

but today i decided to go to the one on my side of town, the one actually closest to my house, the one with no name and no wifi and no super strength stain sensing washers. i could describe the place but im sure you have an idea in your head that is about right so i will skip to the important part.

as soon as i opened the door i was greeted with a friendly smile and hello, not by an owner or manager...just by the person who happened to be first to make eye contact with me. i got an absurd amount of quarters and headed back out to start unloading. as soon as the few folks gathered inside saw how long it had been since i had done laundry, they filed out into the snow without much ado to help me unload and assemble my bags and piles inside. not like it was a big favor, or like i was helpless...just like it was whatcha do.

once i got my loads going i learned the gentleman with the cane who had greeted me and carried my darks was named Paul. he served time in the Air Force and the Army, he has a niece playing ball at George Mason, and he thought my dog was quite handsome. i moved a little closer to hear his story about Korea and was greeted by Jeff and Sam. Jeff was rolling cigarettes and offered everyone in the place one before heading out to smoke one himself. He thought it was amazing that Luke was being so good in the car and laughed at how he was tracking my every move through the windows of the car and the building. He inquired about how old my four legged friend was and what kind of breed mix could have made him so darn big.

later, when i came around the corner with a huge armload of sheets and of course my dear Purple, two young guys who had been having an animated conversation in Spanish since before my arrival conceded the last free dryer to me with exaggerated gestures serving to replace our mismatched words. i thanked them with the same sweeping animation and moved to the window where a young man with a quietly familiar accent struck up a conversation that was immediately interrupted when we saw a face through the glass that we both recognized. i knew the face as one of the bartenders where i work, and james knew it as the face of his new math professor at the college where he is studying to be a civil engineer when he returns to his home country in West Africa. when everything was dry and folded, my new friends Jeff and Sam wished me well in my studies and gave Luke a goodbye scratch behind the ears. i bought them both a slice of pizza. james helped me fill my car with clean clothes and walked my dog around the block while i picked up a bunch of stuff that i had dropped trying to operate pockets with mittens on.

there is nothing wrong with those other, "nicer" laundromats...and certainly nothing specifically BAD ever happened to me at any of them. but in 6 months nothing that has made me happy to be alive and part of the human race has either. and certainly nothing worth blogging about in the middle of the night. i like my side of town.

momentary sanity

2011-11-30T17:56:00.001-08:00

its a weird thing when you figure out what you are supposed to do with your life.
especially when you never thought there was going to be "that thing" you were going to do with your life. and its possible that even if there is "a thing," we are always doing something that will become part of "that thing" we do...and we will always be growing and changing in how we do "that thing" so i guess the moment i am talking about is kind of arbitrary...
but if you never thought there would be such a moment...
the one where suddenly everything you find exciting and magical and fun and important...all your talents and your passions and your quirky ideas...every cause on your heart and dream in your mind....your knowledge and your questions...your experiences and your wonderings....your light and your shadows...your fight and your fears...all fit under the umbrella of one thought, one concept, one vision...
the one where every mental snapshot you ever imagined of yourself and hoped might be at least in the realm of possibilities for how your future might look...and even most of the ones you never figured could be more than just dreams...all suddenly make up the pages of one album...your album...
the one where you suddenly feel every movement you have ever made in your body like the training and choreography that will become the performance that is your life...

well, its one heck of a moment.

2011-07-30T08:26:00.001-07:00

fear is paralyzing...humility is mobilizing.

july 19th 2011

2011-07-19T20:05:00.000-07:00

if you have clicked your way here, it was probably in search of blogs about africa...i know im way behind...sorry folks, but its my baby's birthday, so you will have to wait at least one more day...tonight i have some things i need to say to her...

dearest rosetaina 'ti rose' 'crank muffin' 'taina' 'ti zwazo' bertrand,
today is the day you might have turned 4 years old if you had not been born HIV positive, or if you hadn't been born so financially poor, or if you had been treated from birth, or if cheez-it crackers were the cure for AIDs....or any of a million other ifs...
today is also the day i will finally say goodbye to you, the day i will stop clinging to who you were in your tiny broken little body and embrace the truth of who and how you are now.
but first i have a few things i need to tell you.
i remember the moment when i first learned that you existed in the world, i remember where i was sitting, and i remember exactly what it felt like.
i remember the way you looked sleeping in the dining room crib the first time i saw you. i remember the moment dorothy sat you on my lap in a tiny blue onesie that swallowed you up. you were so beautiful and precious and important that i didn't even want to touch you with my dirty from the roadtrip hands.
i loved you before i ever laid eyes on you, before i knew your name, before i felt your head resting over my heart, before you and i discovered our shared love of latin music and lime or cheeze flavored junk food, and an inability to work an ipod.
i loved you when you threw up vanilla pediasure down my shirt (again), i loved you when you refused to be bathed unless i was IN the bathtub with you, i loved you when you stole my warm freshly buttered Rosemanie roll and replaced it with your cold half-eaten one.
i loved you when you cried and when you laughed and when you slept and when you refused to fall asleep. i think you get the idea.
i wanted you with me all the time. the only reason i didn't keep you with me every second of every day was because i wanted to believe you would be at dorothy's long after me and so i shouldn't spoil you COMPLETELY as a courtesy to the nannies and to you. somehow, it felt like keeping you all the time would have been to assume you were going to die soon...and i wanted to treat you like a child with a life, not just a child with a disease. its seems ridiculous now and just so you know if i could do it again i would totally suffer the wrath of the nannies for being that annoying white girl who spoils the babies...i would have kept you in our baby sling right by my side as many seconds as physically possible. we both actually have kervens to thank for so many of our days together. somehow he could see right through my guilt complex so he was the one who would bring you upstairs "forcing" me to let you stay with us a while so you wouldn't give the nannies such a fit. God bless that boy.
you never learned to talk before you died but you have spoken into my life in so many ways. i continue to learn from our moments together, and our moments apart.
thank you for teaching me what it means to crawl, how hard and how important it is. thank you for discouraging too much computer use. when i am finding myself in front of this screen for too long i still think of you trying to shut my laptop and it reminds me to consider whether what i am working on is really the best use of the moment. thank you for the times you were stubborn about what you wanted and the times you shared, it has helped me get better at both when the time is right.
there are so many things i could thank you for...the way you made me feel special and important...the way you made us all laugh...the way you made us all think differently about life and about death. all the help with the laundry when you were strapped to by belly :)...the moments you gave me a reason to slow down, to be quiet, to just be. for all the ways you have guided and encouraged and challenged and stretched my heart. who i am becoming and what i will do in the world has a lot to do with knowing and loving you...and with losing you as well. for such a little thing you have made some big waves ti.
knowing you has helped me do a lot of things. even though it was part of why i came back from haiti, i wouldn't have made it to school if it weren't for you. even in dying you managed to help me live better.
about my leaving haiti...i left because i thought it was what i had to do for me and for everyone else in the house - including you. but i need to tell you it was the hardest thing i have ever done. walking away from you that day was so unbelievably painful that i will probably always the physical reaction im having right now just thinking about it. i was such a wreck on the plane i almost caused the guy next to me to have to take another flight. that whole crawling after me bit with the crying and the reaching - not cool missy. but you couldn't walk or talk so i guess it was understandable behavior on your part.
sometimes i wonder if you knew something i didn't...its weird since i knew how sick you were doing so well (shout out to the vertical like on your growth chart at our last appt!) i never dreamed it would be the last time i would see you. i was sure i would be with you again...and also sure i would be with you at the end whenever that did come. i was already gone before the reality of another possibility hit me.
im not sure what i might have done different in saying goodbye - i don't think we would have ever been really good at that no matter what kind of insight we had...i think it would have sucked no matter what.
i don't know exactly how the whole spirit/heaven/eternity thing works in terms of how tuned in you are to things back here but if you have any awareness of this world at all you know how much i regret not going to haiti to be with you at the end. my heart said go and i talked myself into something more logical and sensible,into something easier for other people to accept and understand, easier for me to accomplish and explain. it has taken me a long time to forgive myself for that, which is part of why it has been so hard to come to terms with you being gone. turns out forgiving yourself is much more difficult and humbling than forgiving other people. i guess that is something else you have helped me learn. i know it would have been just as messy and just as awful and probably more so. but i do wish i had been there. i'm sorry i didn't come. i am so sorry baby girl.
and i am so thankful for your mama who was there by your side so faithfully. she loved you so much. i haven't been able to find out anything about how or where she is since the earthquake last january but i have recently decided that i want to try harder. i really want to see her and hug her again if she is still alive. i really want to tell her how amazing her daughter was and how much effect she has had on me, my family, and so many others. how much affect she will always have. i want to thank her for the honor of having you in our home and our lives during such a precious time of your life.
i also want to forgive your father, and maybe even find him too. i'm definitely going to need the Lord's help for both. but i'm realizing that even more so than your mom, it's important that HE know how amazing you were - that would probably go a lot further in changing his heart than just knowing how angry i am. wow, even as i write to tell you what i have learned from knowing you i am learning more....
i know that you will always be a part of me, one that grows and changes with me and that i continue to learn from and to live differently because of...but i know in order for you to be part of a growing and evolving me, i have to let go of the you that you aren't anymore. for so long i just wanted to HOLD you one more time. i always feel you...but i wanted to TOUCH you...but the you that resides in spirit with the Father no longer fits inside that body i wanted to cradle. your spirit is expansive and beautiful and BIG in a way that poor little body could never have had proper room for. it would have always limited you. and i am finally able to see that in wanting you back that way i would only be limiting you too.
now that you are free of it, you are much more YOU, you have room to be as full and as much as you truly are. in letting go of the body i knew as my "ti zwazo" i can make room in my life for who you really are now, who you really always were.
i am looking forward to getting to know you in this way and to carrying your spirit and your beautiful truth with me forever. your presence will always be BIG but it won't be HEAVY anymore. i think that is how my "little bird" would want it.
happy birthday baby.

africa.

2011-06-12T06:07:00.000-07:00

it's happening.
it's happening today.
okay...so maybe africa is always happening...but today it is happening to me.

for anyone who has spent more than a few minutes with me this is probably not that surprising I guess since I have been in africa in part of my heart for what seems like always. The vision and dream and desire of being there was so strong in me that I have often forgotten I haven't already been there.

more than just going to africa, I get to go to do the very work there that inspired me to study Dance/Movement Therapy and to challenge myself to return to dance after years of thinking that part of my life had ended. Dancing and moving with the children and families who have experienced so much that is foreign to me in a place that is so far removed from the places I call home will go from vision to reality in the days ahead.

this is humbling and exciting and overwhelming because in the visions and the words spoken over me, people were healed of hurts, discovered their innocence, reclaimed their childhoods, saw the separation between who they were and the things that had happened to them, they understood their value and preciousness to God, THROUGH THEIR DANCING...their dancing with me.

part of the inward journey that has been graduate school as been a desire to be "a beginner" to be the one who has the most to learn, who isn't in any way the leader...i haven't been able to find that place completely in these two years...until now. in this amazing group of people with whom i get to travel...i am the beginner in so many ways. not only that, i feel no pressure to be more than that. this is where i will crawl. and this is also where i will grieve. this is where i will forgive and let go.

very few things scare me. but i am afraid.

this opportunity is a divine appointment between my exact hopes for how a trip to africa would be structured and the very edges of my faith and trust, in myself and in the Lord.

i have decided to be there. and today i take the first steps from which there is really no turning back.

i absolutely do not have what it takes to finish this month according to the world, physically, emotionally, professionally, financially. i have less money, less experience, less training, and less muscle than most everyone i will be with.
suddenly i sound like every other odd character that God has ever used to do something incredible. something just.so.God.

this, more than anything maybe, is exactly why it feels so right to be going now and in this way and with this group.
this, more than anything maybe, is why i am afraid.

for anyone who is interested in learning more about what i am doing where here is a little rundown:

We will join drama therapists and fellow students in urban and village settings in Kenya and Uganda, where we will exchange knowledge and techniques with African theatre practitioners, counselors, social workers, and other group leaders who help heal and transform their communities. Using applied theatre and drama therapy methods, our work with community leaders will focus on several outcomes:

In Nairobi, Kenya, working with the Amani People's Theatre ( http://www.aptkenya.org www.aptkenya.org ), we will focus on street children in remand homes.

In Budondo village, Uganda, working with the Atua Theatre Troupe and Budondo Intercultural Center ( www.budondo.wordpress.com ), we will focus on women’s reproductive health.

In the Great Rift Valley in northern Kenya, and villages near the coast of the Indian Ocean, we will focus on preventing election-related violence.

In Northern Uganda, we will focus on rehabilitating and healing trauma in child soldiers after 20 years of war.

Another group we will be working with is the Rifiki Participatatory/Forum Theatre Troupe ( http://www.rafiki-theatre.org ).

ultimately, these people and groups recognize the power of movement, drama and music as healers and tools for communication and change. they see them as particularly useful to their cultures who live so immersed in these forms already in their daily lives. as such, they have invited us to come and to work with them to share the resources we have about how to take these art forms and make them part of the healing and growing process for body and spirit, individual, family, community, nation, and continent.

we are humbled and honored to share and eager to learn from all the wisdom they have to offer as well.

it feels important to thank everyone who has honored my heart's desires by supporting me and those who have honored my heart's desires by challenging me and asking the hard questions, those who have understood my crazy lack of schedule or plans, those who store my stuff, those who watch my dog, those who have given me grace for not returning phone calls or emails, those who have put up with excessive phone calls or emails...there are so many ways people have loved me into this place.
each of you have been part of why i believe i will be able to do this and that it will be right and good. and hard. and scary. and fun. and strange. and awful. and beautiful. each of you who will hold me in your heart for even a moment are part of the magic and the holiness of this with me.

thank you.

i hope to have some internet access and to keep people at least mildly updated but you can expect a flood of caseystories once i land back on this side of the pond.

you may wanna get some floaties.

ANYONE WHO WOULD LIKE TO RECEIVE EMAIL UPDATES SHOULD CONTACT ME AT cnichols3@antioch.edu AND I WILL DO MY BEST!

ANYONE WHO WOULD LIKE TO SUPPORT THIS WORK AND MY OTHER WORK TO OFFER HEALING THROUGH DANCE IN THE US AND IN HAITI PLEASE VISIT www.muchministries.org OR ME AT THE ABOVE EMAIL

ANYONE WHO WOULD LIKE TO SUPPORT ME IN THIS WORK AND AS A HUMAN BEING THROUGH PRAYER DOESN'T HAVE TO CONTACT ANYONE...BUT I WOULD LOVE TO KNOW ABOUT IT!

today (really it was friday but on friday it was called today)

2011-04-30T06:12:00.000-07:00

Today a million things will have gone wrong in the world.
And today it was my job to skip down the hall with a 16 year old girl while wearing funny hats and believing that life could be really good.
And somehow, right now, that wins.

so why do we do it?

2011-04-30T05:08:00.000-07:00

as I was sitting in my new favorite spot in the antioch library (its like a living room...how did I not know about this when I was carless and LIVING at school first semester?!) when a gentleman came in to use the television set near my comfy couch. We had seen each other often around campus and even said hi but had not offically met...he introduced himself and we started talking. Somehow we got from the joys of the end of semester to the environment to the mountain gorillas of africa, to rwanda – which is where he is from, to my trip to africa, to the differences in communication styles between cultures, to friendship, to relationship, to LOVE.
Funny how everything really does come down to Love...no matter where you start Love is where you eventually end up....between lovers...between friends...between strangers....
between communities....between systems...between paradigms....
between generations....between moments.
No matter what you are buying or selling, doing, saying or believing...in every human transaction Love is that something that we are all trying to figure out how to give and hoping desperately to get.

This beautiful stranger sat with me and instead of watching his video he told me all about how he didn't know anything about Love because he had never had it, never felt it. He told me in great detail about all the aspects of Love he didn't know or understand.
After about half an hour of hearing things like “Love is about learning what matters to someone and making it matter to you too....Love means considering considering how you impact someone else's happiness.....Love makes you crazy, its terrible, because it is everything! It becomes what you eat, what you sleep, what you think, all that matters!....Love is being there even when you don't know how...Love is hard...” I finally said,
“Sounds to me like you have a much better idea than you think!”
He laughed and went on to say he felt he should understand it more....work harder to figure it out. I had to take a deep breath and a long look into that mirror he held up to the foolish image of what I have looked like far too often this year....
Then I said to myself, just out loud so as not to exclude my new friend, “I don't think we get to understand it because it is bigger than us. Its not something we were built to understand, its something we are built to do. It doesn't make sense, it just works. It's hard...it's really hard...”
“So why do we do it?” my holy messenger of wise reflection asked, surely just for effect at this point (nice touch by the way God.)

“Because....because its crazy and its hard and at its very worst it still feels to much better than giving up.” I heard myself reply.

Damn. And we wonder why I can get my neuroscience homework done.

since i don't have the internet i do all things web at once when i get to the library...like post blogs i wrote instead of doing homework while checking my facebook...the following quote was on someone's status as i was posting this blog and it seemed appropriate...its ridiculous...and kind of exactly true.

Love is like a booger. You keep picking at it until you get it, then wonder what to do with it.

faith hope and love...and therapy

2011-04-22T07:47:00.000-07:00

thanks to the i am already aware she is amazing and yet she is not an actual acquaintance in the conventional sense lexi holloway my belief that i am supposed to have a blog but not feel obligated to blog according to any sort of schedule or in any way consistently has been completely validated...
so here i come out of what may seem like nowhere to the world wide web but has felt more like out of everywhere to me to say whats on my heart...more like what is being chiseled into my heart with the sharp instrument of life and the hand of a big god super serious about his love thing...

i have been in graduate school for two years now learning about dance movement therapy. before coming here i had already declared Love as my chosen profession but they didn't offer a masters in Love so i settled for something really close...dancing :)(actually i do have textbooks with titles like 'a general theory on love'...i LOVE my school)

but i digress...

the point is, while i have been here in a circle of people who are dynamic, embodied, self aware, radical, and all other kinds of amazing, and we are in a program that is just as amazing in how it engages us in the process and keeps our learning immersed in the truths of life outside the classroom, we have still invested a significant chunk of time in the classroom.

it has been challenging and nurturing, informative and question provoking...and it has taken me and many of those around me into a very heady place where sometimes we begin to see everything through the hypothetical and theoretical lenses we use to view the learning materials. i had a great talk with another amazing georgian (who i am actually acquainted with!) last night about the ways that disecting and examining any subject, particularly one involving humans, can lead to a very constricting pragmatism if we aren't careful that doesn't leave space for the way Truth and Life can and do contradict pattern and logic and expected...all. the. time.

maybe in our hearts we are still claiming hope for what is possible, but with our mouths we begin to expound on evidence and awareness of what is common, or likely, or expected...to be sure that we make it clear we understand and we KNOW what it is we are facing. but as we name the worst case scenario, or even the status quo, more and more...and we name our wildest hopes less all we are really doing is naming our fears and keeping our faiths silent...so we don't look foolish. or ignorant. or ridiculous.

or maybe so we don't lay claim to a miracle that is too big for God to come through on..oh wait...i didn't think those existed...

in our work we talk a lot about being "attached to outcome" and how that affects the work we do with clients. as the therapist our role is to create space for a client to find their own healing, to facilitate the process, to emotionally hold and support them as they find the truths for themselves. it is not our job, nor our right, to change or "fix" another human being or their problems and this is where outcome comes in. we are taught that we must be very aware of the outcomes we are attached to for our clients, as humans we will certainly have them, but our commitment as therapists is to support a client in discovering and pursuing the outcomes that matter to them. so we spend a lot of time talking about what i looks like to create a relationship with a person, explore their life experiences and feelings with them, to create goals and ideas that guide how we work together with them...and yet not become too attached to the outcomes we personally desire for them. umm...yeah.
i don't disagree with this, but i do have to continually examine it very carefully and very often...especially as i start to move my concept of what i am learning here out of the laboratory and more fully into my messy messy life office at the center for people who want to show love for a living. (read: usually my car)

the past two years have been serious career development for me. i have had and continue to have so many training experiences that push and challenge and stretch my understanding of what it means to love, how many ways that can look, what it takes from me, what it takes from God...i could write a thesis...or a business plan...hmmm....

this hit me this morning and it puts so much of what has been going on for me into new perspectives...i know i've been all over the place so try to stay with me here...

faith is believing in the infinity of possibility...without having to get into specifics..if i have faith...i just have it...no matter what set of details you give me faith always has the same answer...YES, ITS POSSIBLE.

hope is a different story...if i have hope...its hope in something happening (or not happening)...its being attached to an outcome for sure...but if hope comes from a holy place then so does the outcome, right? this is important because this means hope is a relational activity...its hard to think of too many things we could hope for that wouldn't affect other people in some way...so living a life of faith and a life of hope are two different stories...and that is all before you get to...

LOVE if faith is believing something is possible and hope is having faith that something that is possible will actually happen to you or someone else or someplace or whatever...then love is living in such a way that you support or encourage that thing to happen...doing and saying things that make it more possible and NOT doing or saying the things that make it less possible...love isn't just relational...its aggressive! it isn't just attached to an outcome...its following at high speeds in a fast car, its studying the blueprints and coming through the airducts, its finding the shortcut and coming out in front, its crouching in the bushes, tracking through the jungle, lying in wait for as long as it takes...its pursuing that outcome to the ends of the earth..and beyond.

okay...and then there is that whole thing about faith hope and love being really important...but the greatest of these being love...

whew...all this and no 401k?

(ok this is the part where i could take the time to make it clear that i don't think that loving people or places or things means you get to decide what is best for them (or stalk them in dark alleys)...in fact that couldn't be more opposite of what i am trying to say here...but i am going to trust that anyone who even knows to read this knows a few things about me...
a. that these are slightly manic thoughts presented in my somewhat melodramatic writing style so that they are out of my head and can be properly played with, talked about, analyzed and danced with until they feel right...
2. i would clear anything i believe or hope for anyone with my Boss before loving it onto them...and i am currently being trained in all kinds of methods for loving people that are not invasive, painful, or even immediately noticable to the naked eye. so don't go checking your airducts, your privacy and free will are safe with me.
and d. this is just the start of a much longer conversation that i would love to have with all of you, or both of you...or just you. hey mama.)

nervous as a long tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs...

2011-01-16T09:54:00.000-08:00

i had the weirdest dream....i took my mama and my aunt sabra and some of their friends to church in a small southern baptist style sanctuary that was supposed to be in haiti...upon walking in i became aware that joseph kony (the ugandan leader of the LRA, a rebel group that enslaves and exploits children as soldiers and sex slaves) was in attendance. other than the presence of this church in haiti and this terrorist's presence in it, a couple of other things were kind of strange...
he was white...with an entourage made up of middle aged men from india and pakistan...who i apparently knew well.
in the midst of all this all my energy was going to trying to convince my mama and her friends to stop being silly and whispering in church, which they saw as highly uptight and hypocritical on my part...because they didn't recognize kony and know that our back pew antics could exact a severe penalty from him and his cronies...which i was apparently painfully aware of and hence...
nervous as a long tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs...

i have no idea what i expect to come of sharing this dream...but i couldn't bring myself not to...its just too weird...and i would just love to hear what cory brooks thinks about it....

mama t

2011-01-16T09:50:00.000-08:00

1-13-11

I bought mother teresa stamps today. Im still not sure how I feel about it. Wish I could ask her how she feels about it. Which leads me to wonder how she would feel if, given the chance to speak with her despite space and time, life and death, I chose to ask her what her feelings are about being put on a postage stamp.

2011-01-16T09:48:00.000-08:00

1-10-11

close your eyes.

close your eyes.

close your eyes.

Those words keep being the answer. Sometime even when there isn't a question, at least not one I have asked yet.

kompa

2011-01-13T12:53:00.000-08:00

1-9-11

by now I am supposed to be pulling into my driveway at the “north forty,” the farmhouse we call home in new hampshire...but the weather had other plans so I am spending the night with beautiful and gracious friends and trying again tomorrow...well, in a few hours...

thanks to their generosity and hospitality, I spent the 12 hour plane delay visiting and then dancing in my red high heels before getting a few hours sleep in a cozy bed...all of which totally beats at night on the floor of the atlanta airport :)

in a group of people I had mostly never met, dancing a style very new to me but known intimately to them, to music in a language I am still learning but spoken since birth by most everyone else in the room...at first I felt very awkward and a little out of step, which was both funny and humbling as a dancer and dance teacher. Part of me was so drawn by the music and the desire to move but another just wanted to hide. I studied the movements of those on the dance floor, their arms, their feet, their hips...the effortless way their bodies interpreted the music and conversed with their partners. I tried to compare it to anyting I knew of dance, whether I had a dance in me as fluent as the kompa was the bodies of the men and women I watched.
My face must have betrayed my deep concentration because eventually a gentleman I had been introduced to earlier came over to ask if something was wrong. Laughing at myself I told him no to which he asked “then why aren't you dancing?” It WAS a dance after all....I told him maybe later, to which he responded by setting down his drink and reaching out his hand. I haven't been so nervous to take to the dance floor since the 6th grade when girls were all a foot taller than boys and no one knew what to do with their hands! but being a dancer and dance teacher, letting someone else lead has always been a challenge for me even when I know what they want me to do...and here I was with a man I didn't know and my only kompa lessons had been in the streets and salt flats of jubilee blanc, given by barefoot haitian children!
We got off to a decent enough start but I could feel myself working to hard at trying not to make it feel (and LOOK) like work.
I suddenly remembered my trip to driftwood beach earlier in the day, my last minute stop to soak up some georgia ocean magic before heading back up north...while walking with kathy and shelby we had closed our eyes and let the beach tell us where to go and talked about all the times where closing our eyes had helped us find the rhythm, to find the way.
I decided to try something.
Hoping for no disasterous fall...i closed my eyes.
It was like someone had turned up the volume. Not of the music or the sounds of the party, although I could hear the nuances of both much better. the thing I could suddenly hear so clearly wasn't a sound at all, it was the movement. The moment I closed my eyes, I was aware of exactly where and how I was being touched. I could sense from the pressure in one finger of my partner's hand how he wanted me to lean, move, or turn. I could feel his next move come from his shoulders and be ready to make it with him. even without seeing, I could feel his head tilt or his feet shuffle in the air near mine, drawing me to come closer or sending me back.
The most amazing part, even with my dance movment therapy nerd hat on, I wasn't THINKING about this, it was just happening. His body was calling out instructions to mine and mine was obeying. Later as I danced with others, mine would do some instructing of its own and feel the response of a body that heard loud and clear--way more effective by the way than a warning glance :)
At the end of each dance, I would laugh to myself because I could tell both my partners and I were surpised that this white girl could kompa well enough to keep up with them...
it gave me a whole new take on the old brag “i could do that with my eyes closed!”

driftwood beach

2011-01-13T12:51:00.000-08:00

god has told the ocean the secret, and the ocean tell it to me anytime I stop to listen.
sway. flow. be. come. go.
stand, but not so firmly you cannot bend.
bend, but not so easily that you fall.
when you fall, don't fight the ebb and flow, use it to make your way up.
there is a place in the surf for looking out into the coming waves,
and a place where keeping your eyes on the shore is best. both horizons always have something to show you.
if you can't see it, close your eyes.

the truth
like the ocean
is a body so breathtakingly simple and yet unimaginably deep
at once the epitome of both force and surrender.
and like the ocean, clearly seen and yet tied so intimately with forces unseen.

the ocean is where I find the rhythm I was meant to move to. where I find the truth.
where I become true again.
today I closed my eyes and walked with you in the waves and began to find my way.

can you have resolutions if you skip fake amish new year's?

2011-01-06T21:19:00.000-08:00

so tonight was supposed to be "fake amish new year" which is a long story that is probably only funny to my family, or maybe just me, and it ended up not happening at all. it wasn't until i laid down tonight (which happened to be right a midnight) that i realized that in addition to missing out on time at "the coast," fireworks, seeing a lot of peeps i had yet to get to hang with on this break, and a midnight dip in the julienton river, by skipping regular new years in favor of fake amish new years and then skipping that too we never officially welcomed 2011....i realized this in a kind of backwards way too...
first i decided that i should try to write, draw, paint, sew, or dance something everyday and that even still i should be writing everyday, there is just too much happening in my world and my head on a daily basis not to be documenting it for my own reflection once this school season of my life gives way to whatever is next...so next a thought that it was was too bad i didn't think of this at new years so that i could have started fresh with this idea at the beginning of 2011 (read: so that i could have turned this healthy idea for growth and living into the cliche and undue burden and pressure of a new year's resolution)....only then did i realize that since the 6th was supposed to have been fake amish new year, our new year, i was not late and was in fact exactly on time (it was 12:02am by the time i finished having this thought)
so at that point it seemed appropriate to get out of bed and make sure that day one of this venture is a success....writing every day means that sometimes what i write will be way more for me than for anyone else but for sanity's sake i think i will write it all here anyway, except when i don't, and except when i write really important things on envelopes, napkins, the cardboard from battery packages, the back of my hand, and receipts from damon's famous wings.
anyone who actually keeps up with this and notices that i am slacking at any point is free to whine about it, remind me incessantly, and otherwise give me shit about it and call it holding me "accountable" to my own desire and goal...you know...like we do....
ironically, this first writing is really just me writing about my intention to do more writing more than actually writing anything...does it count if i say the word "writing" an obnoxious number of times?
in the spirit of documentation...i did spend the day out at my house, the south forty farm, cleaning (read: moving all the stuff people are storing in my house around so i looks less like a repo warehouse after a tornado). i ended up taking my first baby steps in throwing away stuff which is surprisingly difficult for me in spite of my somewhat nomadic spirit for a number of reasons we won't analyze here tonight. i also ended up finding reminders of moments and places and people from my life that haven't rode shotgun in my thoughts for quite some time. i found reminders of times when i saw certain moments, places and people very differently than i do right now. i found tiny things i can't believe i have managed to hold on to all these years without even meaning to, and couldn't find large and important things i had diligently tried to keep near and i am still pondering the metaphor behind that. i found the strength to move big pieces of furniture by myself and to let go of pieces of my past. i found pieces of things that have been broken and grace for those who broke them. i found a great mix cd and listened to it 5 times through. i found the lyrics i had been needing to hear on time number 5 and i found room to dance around all by myself. i found great joy and satisfaction in finding a place in my home for everyone's stuff, including 4 couches. again, still working through the metaphor. after all that i found a way to leave the house i love so much thinking as i always do when i am there how cool it would be if i could find a way to just stay out there all the time for a while, fixing things and making art and stuff out of old junk. not now, but someday.

i also found a vitamin bottle full of bullets, a book called he-manners, a mysterious bag of meat, kasey kartwheel's pom pons, an unopened bottle of chianti (in the basket) from before 1969, a hand knit baby sweater, the sheet music for november rain, the keys to two churches, a swimsuit worn in the 1972 miss georgia pageant, a velvet robe with zebra print lining and fur trim...custom made for a dog, the receipt for a radiator i put into my first car, a giant wooden bust of a native american chief, and a spittoon.
i love the farm.

happy not fake amish new years everybody...

been feelin its time to start blahing again...must be all the self reflection paper

2010-12-14T01:24:00.000-08:00

so i guess that is a good place to start...with the end of my final reflection paper for the semester...which led to a moment out in the woods with the djembe that rocked my world...more on that when papers are done...

...I began to sense in myself a glimmer of the force and presence that I would like to have the courage to bring with me wherever I go. It would not always look like confrontation, in fact it may more often be the courage of restraint and resolution, it is simply the courage to be what the moment requires whenever possible. It will rarely look the same way twice, the answers will often feel a little like questions, and the road where these questions and answers live is one we will always be traveling on.
It was here I recognized that the nature of this season of integrating the work, and the girl, and the world, the one I have recently entered, is directly connected to my struggle in this semester to find a flowing rhythm, to find my space in the group, and my place in my work.
My shape is changing so my space is shifting, my worlds are colliding and so my place is emerging, my song has new verses and so the rhythm is changing.

The time has come for me to beat my drum.

2010-07-08T15:10:00.000-07:00

yesterday marked a year since my cranky little rosetaina went from being a living and breathing part of my life that i missed every moment i wasn't with her to an idea and a memory that i miss every moment i am not with her. more time has passed since she died than i spent with her while she was alive. i have spent more time with the bird sketches and trinkets i have created and gathered to remember her by than i did with this precious creature herself. yet even as she becomes less and less a physical reality and more and more a collection of memories, images, and sensations in my mind and my body the bigger the space in my heart for her seems to feel. she grows into a bigger and bigger part of my life, part of who i am becoming...even as our moments together become a smaller and smaller percentage of the live i have lived. she died without knowing any words, but she speaks into every part of my life. she never learned to walk, but she always seems to go with me. i understand her death ended her suffering but it started a pain in me that i am still at a loss to understand. a year later i can look back and see how much my life has changed for the better because of knowing her, even because of losing her...but in the moment, any given moment she comes to mind and heart, i find myself with a hole there that no amount of purpose or understanding will ever sufficiently fill. last night i realized i have tried to fill it with a lot of that, and a lot of other things too. someone very wise told me the day she died that hurt and sorrow carve out space in our hearts for greater love.
i believed her.
while i packed that hole in the year since with reasons and everything else i could find, i waited for that love to grow in.
it didn't.
and if anything it felt like the love i already had was leaking out through the space and for all the clutter i was stuffing into my heart, it was emptier than ever. but that beautiful spirit who braved it with me as i first waded through the new waters of this ocean of loss wasn't wrong. she just didn't tell me the whole truth. she couldn't have then. i wouldn't have been able to hear. but as i walked the spaces of my heart last night, examining on this anniversary how my life has continually remodeled them i found it for myself. the sorrow created the space, and love is definitely the only thing that can fill it - because it is the only thing that makes me miss her this way, that makes me glad i knew her, and glad she threw up down my shirt so many times, and glad she preferred my chest to any pillow, and happy to do everything with one arm because she was in the other, and that makes those few months seem like a lifetime. a really big crazy abandoned humiliating supernatural love is the only thing that fits the shape of her in my heart. but it was me who supposed to fill that new space with that greater love. and since she left that space the girl who wasn't afraid of anything and who had happily devoted her life to loving has been afraid of that kind of love. not only did that require me to go against my very nature, it invited the destruction and confusion that always accompanies fear.
no wonder i have been such a disaster this year.
yesterday was the anniversary of her death and the day that would have been her 3rd birthday is just days away. i can't think of a better way to celebrate her life than to do something with all this revelation.
so now, like almost always...the answer to all my problems comes down to rejecting fear and embracing love.
i guess i'd better get right on it.

so what now francis?

2010-07-03T16:35:00.000-07:00

this summer i spent a few weeks visiting my sister in her new place out in the collection of mud and tarps and tin and thatch and concrete that houses the love and the life that is jubilee blanc. i think we had internet maybe twice during the trip...
but the real reason that we didn't upload pictures and statuses or post blogs is that each moment there demands to be lived in a way that just doesn't allow for the commentary we have become accustomed to here...

in fact...i was inexplicably sick for much of the trip and i am starting to understand that my body was not reacting to germs or conditions...i have faced all that before without such debilitating effects. it was the overwhelming truth of that place and that life that i think my body no more knew what to do with than my heart does. the unrelenting and overwhelming rawness of life i am always confronted with in jubilee...that rawness that can at once be both essential and unthinkable...beautiful and awful...so real and surreal... it is somehow both the reality my heart and body crave but also the truth that is often more than one heart...and one body...can even hold.

i used to say there were two kinds of hippies in the world, the ones who went out and just lived in the woods cause things are bad...and the ones who wouldn't go and just live out in the woods yet cause things are bad...i probably never admitted judging the first kind, probably stopped with how much i didn't UNDERSTAND them. i thought they were all hiding from the truth, giving up, but the more of the world i actually get out and touch, and let touch me, the less i judge, the more i understand, and the closer i get to eating all my words and hauling ass to the woods before i do any more harm than has already been done by would-be world savers before me.

changing the world is hard. and the more intimately you try to know the world, the harder it gets. and forget whether we are capable or not, whether we have enough faith or not, whether we want to or not...what even needs changing...and how much of it is actually out in the world and how much is in our own hearts?
some of those people who i thought were hiding really are...but some of them have have been brave enough to get out and take this look inside and do something with what they found.

i love the ideas of change, about how beautifully simple it can be, about how we can empower and be empowered, about how changing our own world can change the world of everyone who knows us which changes their little worlds which changes the world of everyone who knows them and so on...these lovely swirly ever growing bubbles of truth and goodness and light annoying enough for a coke commercial that i would hate about changing the world. i love believing in change and in truth and rightness. i love sharing that. i love hacking away at my life to make it look more and more like a life that could change the world. i love discovering how much doesn't actually need to change...the unbelievable amount of good and right that only need be returned to or nurtured, brought to light, given space, and invited to grow.

but i talk too much, and even when i am living it, i get sick of how much i talk about it sometimes.

this month i visited my sister in jubilee. she doesn't talk very much. you won't hear her talk much about change, and certainly not about bubbles of goodness and light, but if you are smart enough to shut up a minute and follow her around you will hear something amazing.

the sound of the world quietly being changed.

i would love to say that i was this smart...but it was probably only the fever and fatigue that kept me quiet enough to hear...
everything about lala's life in jubilee screams love and truth and honor and jesus. the way she teaches phonics, the way she pays kids to pick up trash, the way she makes them do it some days for free. the ways she gives out pop tarts, the way she cleans a wound or lances an abcess, the way she eats, the way she doesn't eat, the way she hangs out, the way she gets mad, the way she problem solves, the way she bathes in a bucket on the porch, the way she poops in a hole in the ground...the way she does everything she does honors both the goodness in the life of jubilee that existed before she got there and the potential that exists yet unused in every soul she meets. it says a humble yes to all that is right and good about life there, all that we could learn from that place and the people in it, and a bold and unwavering no to evil and to fear and to everything that is the enemy of hope. she isn't worrying herself with every detail, she isn't agonizing over politics or theology, she isn't wasting time being annoyed with everything that is wrong with...well everything...she isn't thinking about changing things with her life, she is just living her life in a way that changes things.

she says she wouldn't be where she is and doing what she is doing if it weren't for me...and i believe her. at least i believe what she means by this, but i know she could have gotten there in other ways. lots of other people would have believed in her even if i hadn't. but i did, and i am louder than lots of other people...and we have shared a bathroom for most of our lives so i have been around more than lots of other people. but student has most definitely become teacher and little sister has gotten awfully big (yes lala, i am calling you fat :)
she has gone out and just started doing everything she claims i taught her...the stuff i have been learning too much to remember how to just do...watching her reminded me that if i don't feel equipped or fulfilled doing all that analyzing...its probably because it is someone else's calling.

i have been home a while. well, i have spent time in several places i call home since i left hers in jubilee. this summer has given me the courage and the humiliy to go back into the woods a while, my woods anyway, and finish that long look inside i started last year. my body has largely healed, though that "not quite right yet-ness" that comes after illness still lingers...i suspect its source is in my heart maybe as much as in my lymph nodes...so it has been slowly that i get back in tune with the beautiful, crazy, terrible, wonderful noise of the lives i have chosen here on this side of things. all the while, one sound still rings in my ears and i hope i will keep everything else harmonized to it...

...the sound of the world quietly being changed.

i love you lala...more than djeff loves your boots.

eating utensils for thought

2010-05-23T12:00:00.000-07:00

i read a story today in a book about group psychotherapy that described a man's imagined tour of heaven and hell...they were two rooms that looked exactly the same....people sitting at a table around an abundant meal each holding really long handled spoons...

in hell the people were starving and despondent, able to reach the pot with their spoons but unable to reach their mouths...

in heaven the people were happy and well fed, joyously enjoying the meal and one another...they had learned to use their spoons to feed one another...

what if heaven and hell aren't dichotomous points on some supernatural map but what happens depending on how we interact with who and what is wherever we are? what if they are just created by what we do with our spoons?

and what if god did not designate these eternal destinations? what if he just created us...and the meal...and the spoons?

its like that grab bag at the dollar store,..you aren't sure what the point is but there is all kinds of stuff in there...

2010-05-22T10:08:00.000-07:00

yesterday someone told me that her hair started growing curlier after her second child and my response was "maybe i should have another kid"...like i had already had one....which was weird because i haven't physically had one...it was so striking to realize that even on a body level i feel like a woman who has had a child and lost her...the importance of the time i spent with her and the connection and memories i have with her actually override my knowledge of my body and experiences...im like a walking dance movement therapy thesis...and i miss her.

i have secured a clinical counseling internship for the fall semester at an alternative high school program in keene. i am really excited about it, i feel like i am going to learn a lot and enjoy it too...for those of you who have been awaare of the process...the way it has come about has also reminded me that my way of doing things can be different from someone else's without either of us being wrong...what would be wrong would be for either of us to try to change our way simply because of the difference....i don't do things the way a lot of people do, especially other graduate school students...this shouldn't have been a surprise :) but instead of seeing the value in my way and allowing it to serve me in a new set of circumstances i wasted some time trying to assume a whole new way and being frustrated that it wasn't working. this internship process really brought me out of that sillyness and back into doing life the way i do it best...that is feeling pretty darn great...

i have found my inner beyonce...and i have to admit we get along better than i thought we would.

i have booked a place ticket to be in haiti for the month of june...well most of it...and i discovered i am much better at being present in this world when i have a ticket to that world in my back pocket (read email inbox - we all know no one gets tickets anymore and that there is a good chance i am not wearing any pants)waiting for me. interesting.

i told someone about my work in haiti. he offered me his ak47 as the best solution. i didn't kill him. i didn't mame him. i didn't even raise my voice. in fact, i didn't engage him at all. i think i have reached some new plane of consciousness. take that mama T.
(that last part is for nancy who will unfortunately probably not read this - no actual disrespect was paid to mother teresa during the writing of this blog.)

i start the great migration on monday....i am super excited to get back to ga...new england is a great experience but the south is home...

this whole grad school thing was supposed to be a journey of self discovery...and the first thing i discovered is that while it is super hard...a sure fire way to find your truest self is to get good and lost first...and i succeeded brilliantly...i think i am turning a corner in that maze and i like where i am headed. for everyone who has walked along me at some point, or who i might meet on the miles ahead...thank you and bless you for wisdom, grace, truth, honor, and love...i have received much and i am always open to more...may i repay every kindness in how i live every moment i am given.

spring cleaning

2010-03-30T17:51:00.000-07:00

my room mate has discovered a genius way to clean our floor...she blows the scented bubbles left over from our most recent parade and once they land on the floor luke licks them up. its working great and his breath has never been better. i just have one concern, luke just turned 5 yesterday...what are the laws about child labor and how to they translate to the canine community? he is already doing our dishes and bouncing most of our parties. he also does a little modeling on the side. i want to make sure we aren't exceeding his allowed work hours for the week. maybe there is some kind of form i should fill out?

baggage...and claims...and the stuff we carry

2010-03-28T21:32:00.000-07:00

so over spring break i did what all wild and crazy grad students do...i headed down to haiti for my share of earthquake dust and 7 nights in the way more than five star starlite motel...the rating scale of course being how many stars you can see from your bed - or your bath. anyway, as per usual when heading to my beloved ayiti, i put everything i didn't want to lose into my purse and carry on and then covered them the chosen duct tape of the trip...in this case red. since my bag was on its last seams, it even got an extra dose of this wonderful identifying adhesive...

my bag and i both made it into beautiful haiti...just not together. i would find out later that we both made it out of haiti too, again, just not together. for all that i saw and felt, all that happened, all that i experienced with people i love so much in this nation that i love so much that has just been through so much...this dumb bag somehow remained a focal point. that was really annoying to me, even as i would mention it i was wondering why - it wasn't nearly as important to me as any 50 other things happening at any given moment there...or as any 50 other things i could have been telling someone who asked about my trip. even now i am kind of annoyed that this is the first blog about the trip that i feel i have to write. but for some reason, in this bag was more than cheese for dorothy and chocolate for keziah...more than martha's pantaloons and all the underwear i own (with one notable exception of course :). i have gotten so much stuff out of it even though i never actually unpacked it...as a lost bag it carried so much of what i needed to remember about haiti right now and so much of what i needed to realize about myself right now...talk about a heavy load...good thing i lost it before it became such a metaphor...i would never have been able to lift it.

e's mad hatter tea party birthday!

2010-03-07T09:54:00.001-08:00

Click here to view these pictures larger

8 days.

2010-03-06T08:31:00.000-08:00

haiti. im going. in 8 days.

"i always have a pile" -carrie loucks

2010-02-09T21:09:00.001-08:00

so its been one month and four days since i last put keys to screen here...an important trip to haiti, a humiliating end to what i believed was a special relationship, a holiday crisis intervention, an earthquake, a difficult journey back to school, a birthday adventure...all things i have managed NOT to write about...and now i sit dwarfed by this pile of words in my head that would have to be sorted and stacked and sealed together with commas and "dot dot dots" to even begin to try to construct my experiences and thoughts here in a way that might be of use for the greater good. maybe it is because i have talked about them too much to no real avail, maybe it is because i have been sitting with my own stuff too long to be motivated to devote any more creative energy to it, maybe i am just lazy...but when i imagine building that tower of words it feels about as useful as stacking up all the bricks that have fallen in haiti during this month that has gone by...they will be all together but still a mess...and still in the way....and nothing new will have been created...but tonight i had new thoughts that i did get excited about exploring...that pile of words just seemed to be in the way, even before i sat down to write...now that i have made a path around it i am going to leave the pile where it lays...for now...you never know...and the birthday adventure is a pretty good story...the birthday miracles just keep comin...thanks for the new shoes state radio :)

as for these new thoughts...

i was sitting in an african dance class...i just realized how backwards that sounds...to be sitting in an african dance class...but i was...just taking a break to witness (and breathe...i am thirty you know now...hehe...and just a little sickly this week)...anyway...there were three men all drumming in a row on nearly identical djembes and i noticed the most interesting thing...
...the youngest and newest member of the group sat with a straight back and played his drum solidly and almost formally, like they were strangers. it seemed each stroke was a risk or an offering to the drum, to see what the drum might do with it..
...on the other end a white haired man played his drum more comfortably, like and old friend. it seemed he wasn't so much playing the drum as the drum and his hands were having a conversation...
...but the man in the center. he didn't play his drum at all...he moved with the drum, and the drum with him, like it was part of his own body. as he played there was so separation between his movements and the movements of the instrument or the sound it made...he was not putting rhythms onto the drum but seemed to move through the drum, drawing out of it a rhythm as naturally as taking a breath..and letting it draw rhythm from him just as easily...
watching these men and dancing to the music they created showed me something beautiful and powerful...there is so much there i won't begin to try just yet...it was a picture so big i am still taking it in...

as if that were not enough...

on the way home i turned up the radio just in time to hear michael stipe singing "its the end of the world as we know it, and i feel fine"...and i had the weirdest reaction...i immediately saw haitians standing all over the capitol and countryside singing this at the top of their lungs...in english...with R.E.M. backing them up...i told you it was weird. it gets better...as they sang i realized that all the crumbled buildings had melted into fresh clay. i had this childlike urge to dig into that clay and help to shape it into something fun and wonderful before it dried in the shapes of the former buildings...
i would be the last person on earth to want to say anything that even hints at diminishing the pain and loss of what is going on in that nation that i love so much...to those people i love so much...so it is with some caution that i say that in that moment i realized that i have more hopeful and excited thoughts than ones of despair or sadness as i thought of my beloved haiti tonight...right now haiti is experienceing devastation and suffering that can never be measured. it will never be the same...in many ways that is heartbreaking. but in others, i feel way more than fine about the idea that things might never be the same. i would be more than fine with an end to power systems based on fear instead of fairness, an end to poverty rooted in poor choices by foreigners made centuries ago, an end to struggles of fellow humans being ignored simply because those humans have nothing we want, an end to cycles repeating because education it unavailable to the next generation. if we are talking about the end of that world, i do feel fine. doors have been opened and systems have been challenged, and the world has been changed because of those 40 unimaginable seconds. i would love to the many evidences we have seen of strength, love, creativity and resilience have wide berth to grow and flourish and become "the norm." and this is not just about haiti. be it earthquakes or recessions...revivals or revolutions....i think things are happening all over right now that might feel like the end of the world as we know it...what if that is the beginning of a world like we never dreamed...these struggles are revealing a goodness that we didn't know or remember...what if there is room being made for more beauty and more harmony and more love than we would have ever anticipated possible in the world as we know it? just. what. if.

new year...old canvases

2010-01-06T23:15:00.000-08:00

i could talk about 2009 so many different ways...part of me is astounded that it has been a year since my amazing surprise party 20 days before the big day and the other part of me feels like a lifetime has gone by in these last 365 days...both the not good and good of this year have been pretty heavy and there is just so much there...frankly i am relieved to welcome 2010 if for no other reason than to start fresh and breathe a little...i am actually super psyched to turn 30 oddly enough... something about it just seems like a great idea...i don't think i am very good at being twenty something anymore so i guess it is time...anyway...i feel like a year that has been so much deserves some attention but at the same time i feel a desperate need to look ahead right now and not back...so this is kind of a slippery slope for me...but before i can go forward i did have to go back to that party this time last year...to something about 2009 that is going to be really important in 2010and probably every year after...the night i first put paint to canvas.

god told me to paint around the time he told me about what i could do with dance if i wanted to...and about the time he told me i could go to haiti...i don't have a lot of fears...but blank canvas scared me...or at least intimidated me...
i am the kind of girl who loves to take whatever junk is already laying around and fix up a room but has no ability for interior design when the palette is mine to create...i could color inside or outside the lines with great flare but something about the openness and freedom of new white canvas stopped me short. but the thing in me is a new thing...not like anything i am going to find in the world already...and if i want to see it happen i am going to have to start drawing my own lines to be colored in and around.
and so god said to paint.
that was at the beginning of last year. and some of the beautiful people i am so blessed to know surrounded me one night in early january with supplies, and snacks, and songs, and love and we all embraced the canvas together. we shared palettes and pages and our faces and hair even became each other's canvases before the night was over. it was a glorious introduction to the new thing, this new season, and this new way of life. it has been freeing, it has been messy, and it has forever changed me. it seemed appropriate that i was painting again on that day this year...a much quieter night but as we poured ourselves anew onto last year's canvases a lot came to mind about what painting teaches me everytime i pick up a palet knife...so here is 2009 from the angle of the easel...

anything important to you requires space...there should be spaces in your space for the things you love...spaces to paint...to dance...to play

there are no rules in art...but just like everywhere else...there are consequences

you can go too far...the hardest thing to do is stop painting and let it dry a while but if you don't you end up with busy, blurry, or brown...

you can always paint over it....but you can't take it back...and that isn't the same thing...whether it is hidden completely or becomes part of a new picture you will know what is under there...

if you are afraid to spill you won't paint to the edges...

your favorite jeans can be your paint jeans too...or not...either way is fine

creating paintings is like creating dances...songs...lives...sometimes it is hard to tell what it is going to be until it is done...

you can try to wait to clarify your vision but often if you will just start the vision makes itself real...

art is messy...but the mess is part of the beauty...and the most authentic things in this world both on and off the page are usually more messy than not

as i move into a new year, a new semester, and a new decade of life...i am looking at a lot of fresh spaces waiting for me to bring color to...i am also holding more than one old canvases to be revived with new strokes...

im moving to a new house when i get back to new hampshire and in addition to a great location, and a great roomate, i will have a great space for painting...and i am really looking forward to filling it...and all that could come out of that...

PAINT this year...i dare you!

random firing of neurons...

2009-12-31T07:04:00.000-08:00

so i dreamed that my rosetaina was not only alive but so heavy i couldn't pick her up...she was in the hospital as was her daddy played here by snoop dogg (wearing a teameffort service with a smile workshirt) both being treated my jonathan...who was also directing the latest music video of the air instrument bob marley cover band that kervens, peterson, franz and i formed on my first trip to haiti...the video had a free walking theme and the buttons on the camera he used to film the video were also used to manage the care of the patients in the hospital....and then my daddy kept getting in trouble with my mother for catering to the organic food requests of the hospital director who was a red headed murphy brown or chelsea lately...it seemed to change...and that is just the beginning...i really hope i get into psychoanalysis of dreams next semester :)

the bottom of the barrel

2009-12-04T07:29:00.000-08:00

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

2009-12-04T06:36:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-30T10:04:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-16T08:14:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-14T14:09:00.000-08:00

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

2009-10-22T11:19:00.000-07:00

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...

2009-10-11T15:06:00.000-07:00

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...

a little homework help for my sister...your turn ll

2009-10-10T09:28:00.000-07:00

this is a little old but i am putting it up to remind my sister she has heart homework...and i think i needed some reminding of things too...so yeah...these are some things i became aware of during a time when i had let myself start believing i wasn't worth the trouble...everyone is worth the trouble...but i have this amazing ability to firmly believe that about everyone and yet completely refuse to believe it about me(see line 15)...i might not be the only one with this mysterious gift...if you need a heart homework assignment just let me know...

i have realized that for someone to let me into their universe demands a lot of a person....

it means getting used to unwashed hair

it requires a certain amount of faith in your seatbelt

it is the purse...and all that includes

it is letting me call my self drama free while being a complicated mess that makes life way too hard sometimes

it involves u-turns

it means pajamas are not for sleeping...they are for final exams, the grocery store and saturday mornings at waffle house

lip reading certainly helps

it means getting places late or being the ones to come early to set up and stay late to clean up...and then probably give someone a ride home

it means no more fast food chains

it is being able to take me to lunch in the skirt i wore yesterday...and slept in last night...on someone's porch

it is letting me baby you...or be mean mama....

it is forcing me to let you baby me...or be mean mama when i need it..and i really do

it involves a lot of pee breaks

there are a lot of food rules....hot and cold!

it demands a tolerance for the occasional seemingly unnecessary tears and accompanying self-esteem induced hyprocisy

it does not involve hand sanitizer

the endless casey stories!

for these things and many more i would like to take full responsibility for how they make knowing me a little extra work

but knowing me also demands some other things...

it is laughing alot...even if it is just AT me

its learning all kinds of things that i am totally willing to look up on the internet for you

it involves hearing the truth for all the right reasons

it means the long prayer can still be the quick prayer

there will be dancing

its the purse...and all that includes

it is hearing constant evidence of how big God is and how much he loves us

it makes you think

it approves a pretty automatic adoption into an crazily amazing couple of families

it means letting yourself be seen as valuable and powerful

it is full of surprises

it is void of wal-mart

it always involves great food....and snacks

it is getting confronted with the greatest and most dangerous parts of who you might be

appreciation for "good ice" is precious wisdom

it means getting prayed for...right in the middle of a conversation...sometimes with my eyes open

it definitely includes beach time

it means freedom

it asks you to create space in your life for something revolutionary

it is fun...most of the time anyway

it is to be loved really really hard...and all that really being loved requires

...and i accept responsibility for that too

so, yeah, i am demanding...and i have decided that i think that is okay

man am i ever bad at this....

2009-10-10T08:29:00.000-07:00

after realizing that i have been a car accident, gone to haiti, come back from haiti without my junebug since i last wrote here...and that doesn't even begin to cover any of the in between amazing storieness....i am becoming aware that i am thinking about this blog thing all wrong...i am never going to be good at doing it this way...but the only reason i started this was because i felt like i was really supposed to and that it would be good for me...and it is when i do it...so from now on it might not be in order, might not make sense, might leave really huge things out...but because sometimes someone needs to read my may 27th...and then sometimes i need to find that out and read my may 27th again too...i am really going to tell my caseystories...thanks jennifer

general recap:
no car
no job
no idea how it is going to work out but the thing is i KNOW it will...stay tuned!!

right now i am in a place where you type a lot of things and then delete them...it makes me think about all the things i have typed and then deleted...thought but never said...written but never mailed....it would be interesting if all that stuff was in some re-cycle bin on a mental desktop somewhere...or maybe not....

the other night i had dinner with some new friends here after class and it went something like this.... real homeade korean noodles, chinese rice, indian soup... all covered with processed parmesean cheese...a little wine...lots of laughing...a full belly and a heart(that was running on empty) a little fuller too...moments like these remind me why i love the way that i live my life...even when i am not doing such a good job of living it that way...thank you to the ladies, gentleman, and friends of 21 page street...

i feel like i should say something about this last trip to haiti but there is so much that i never do...that is always how haiti is for me....i had so much peace about coming back (which was pretty remarkable considering i left even more behind than normal)...but now that i am back it is much harder to see things here the right way...and i miss my ti zwazo so much.

okay...my baby...i will just go there...i can't even say the word baby without thinking of her...everything...EVERYTHING...makes me think of her..even more than before because now it is really real. she is really gone. and she really died without me holding her again, holding her knowing it would be the last time. the last time i saw her she was crawling after me and reaching for me and i just had to walk away, get in the car and leave her. nothing has ever felt so wrong in my whole life and it still feels wrong...it still does awful things to my stomach and my heart to even remember it. i am starting to think it isn't ever going to feel better. and i don't really want it to. but i have reached that point where it feels like the world is ready for me to move on and be okay. so i feel ridiculous being so wrecked by the loss of a child i knew was going to die and that i only knew a matter of months... but she was my baby...i don't know why but i felt it before i ever even saw her...before i even knew her name...i loved her before i even thought about it. but then i left her...and i can't go back.
i don't think i have been able to trust a single thing i have done since.
wow...i didn't know that was in there but it suddenly makes the last 3 months of my life make a lot more sense...i think this is all i can handle for now...

a week from haiti...

2009-09-11T08:57:00.000-07:00

so i have put my stuff in drawers and groceries in cabinets and luke has started barking at all approaching cars (including mine) like he is guarding the entrance to fort knox so i guess you could say we are getting "settled in"...i have already had two weeks of school which is weird in a way...i'm realizing that it is going to go by so fast...and that so much is going to happen in this time that i need to be really intentional about taking it all in...so here are some things that happened this week that i hope i don't forget...

we watched some videos in pro sem about pioneer dance therapists and one showed work with two autistic young girls...it was beyond powerful and was emotional itself...these moments of almost supernatural connection that happened with these children who had never had a relationship with another human being because of their condition...and it brought to me the flashes of moments...especially moments in haiti...where i've had similar experiences...blinking with ivenson and givenson....dancing with isna...stargazing and singing with marvins...sign language with emmanuella...having my nose doctored and eye lids raised and lowered for me by ti rose...this of course brought up the fact that in a week i will be back in haiti...i will be hugging those children, i will be seeing the progresses that have been made on buildings and programs and in childrens' developments...and with that comes facing some realities very fully and finally...

elizabeth and i found a "fill a bag for a dollar" thrift store sale and had a glorious time exploring...and i wore my favorite find (favorite besides the ruffled muu muu of course) on thursday...we are calling it the "not big but dramatic black shirt that may or may not have come off the maternity rack but i am rocking it anyway" shirt. and i love it.

we went out to celebrate the birthdays in our cohort for the month of september and i found myself really being myself...i mean really...without thinking about it at all...and it was really really lovely...

i went on a job search that consisted of some very frustrating clicking (clicking: use of technology, specifically computers) and then a walk all over downtown keene...usually carrying my left shoe until i was about to enter a business...asking the question that apparently hundreds of other college students in this town have already asked "are you taking applications?"...my favorite response was "sure, im takin a lot of them. i have to. i can throw them away when you leave but i have to take them." but at some point i saw something i really wanted a picture of. then i realized i had a camera (thanks mama!) and so i stopped and took a few shots...and i it occurred to me that i could decide if i had had a fairly unsuccessful job search or a thoroughly successful one shoed walk through downtown that resulted in some lovely photos, happy moments with street musicians, women with babies, bartenders and a couple of kindred spirits who had chosen to go sans footwear...and that this beautiful day might result in some future employment...and that is what i decided that i had yesterday...

after that i met up with candy lo and ritu for a grocery store excursion and gave my dear friend from hong kong her first stateside driving lesson...very very fun!

and for those of you who know that provision has been an issue heavy on my heart you will be happy to hear that not only did i have a real breakthrough in my spirit about it yesterday, i also had a great talk with candy that evening (over a lovely dinner!)...and i am realizing that i am exactly right that it is out there...that HE has it for me...and HE intends to give it to me in ridiculously fun ways...but he is leaving some space...making some space...for me to give him more glory...for more good to come of what he does when he does it...and i am actually getting really excited about that.

so today it is more job applications...(the clicking has gone much better today btdubs), some laundry, some reading if the library has the books, some homework, maybe some art this afternoon but mostly it is making sure that tonight i think today was a successful day of something...even if it isn't exactly the something i thought i was supposed to succeed in today...i think there is something really important about learning how to see life this way...

a letter to her...

2009-09-04T12:22:00.000-07:00

ti zwazo

you smell like vanilla and you fit perfectly on my chest. that doesn't comfort at all though - you shouldn't - you are almost 2 years old for crying out loud. you lay here with a weight much heavier than your ten and a half pounds and suffer for the sins or the ignorance or the carelessness of others...whatever it is called...nothing has ever seemed so unfair.
your body seems to have given up already...except for the way it clings to mine. and the way you reach out to be held...with your hands, but with your eyes too. so i keep filling your belly, if you can call 10 cc of anything filling...every hour, on the hour...willing you, begging you to see beyond this moment and this pain. but some very angry part of me knows that i won't ever know you as a grown up girl. i won't meet that small but fierce young woman who takes herself a little too seriously but whose smile can stop the whole world from turning.
that woman you should have become...

in my move i found this letter i started to rosetaina not long after she came...i also found a page in my journal where she had scribbled during a clinic visit...you would have thought it was a picaso...

the adventure so far....

2009-09-03T12:51:00.000-07:00

so school started on tuesday but i just officially unpacked today and took my first shower of the week (sorry dmt cohort) so i am just really getting my brain around this thing that i have done...here have been some high points so far...

26 hours in the LUMINA with all my worldly possesions and LUKE...with a 2 hour break on the side of interstate 87...if you are ever feeling distant from your 100 lb dog...just move 1100 miles away with him...the drive will connect you in all sorts of new ways...and dogs make great roadtrip buddies...they let you pick the radio station, they like to eat anywhere you do, and you can still sing at the top of your lungs if you feel like it and it isn't all awkward...

orientation was great...they even let luke participate...i love the ladies in my program and my professors...also made some connections with girls from the SOUTH...they heard me coming a mile away...

MY HOUSE...so i met my new house and my new roomates and they all met LUKE...it went really great...it is an old farmhouse on 200 acres of undeveloped woods for us both to wander in...just about 10 minutes from school and a super easy drive...luke got along with everyone including their dog faith and the new kittens...while we were there we saw two bucks eating from the apple tree in the front yard and a double rainbow...i am taking both as good signs! my roomates are super nice and very helpful...and i have a clawfoot bathtub! i really love that.

since they were still re-arranging for our arrival luke and i headed up to ellsworth for a few days to give them a chance to finish...luke got to meet jenny jones and junebug's family...i got to swim in graham lake and see the "big rock"...and it was a very. big. rock. i really do love maine. and lots of people in it.

as for actual school...here is the low down...i go to a grad school where you are required to remove your shoes before you enter the majority of our classes, there are no tests, we laugh and make noise and dance around like children as PART OF OUR GRADE, i spend my days in a room full of amazing women who not only appreciate my passions...they SHARE THEM...it is going to be intense and tough but it is also going to be amazing...i love the teachers, i love the the mindset of this place, i love my classmates...

speaking of my classmates...what a group of women...one of them has worked with the peace corps, one is a playwright who saw her daughter through a brain tumor (daughter started college the same day we did), one worked at HONG KONG DISNEY (and she knew right away i would want to be one of the "brown" princess...i like that :), one loves candy and snacks as much as i do (yeah we sit together a lot), one is a mother of a three year old who also cares for her disabled mother, and one girl has come from india (her first time away from her family and she moved in the saturday before classes) just to study dance therapy - i think of her if i start to get overwhelmed by my move...pshish :)...there is a brave and beautiful story for each of them and and i am so honored to be taking this journey with them...

there was definitely a moment this week when i kind of freaked out...i realized that i hadn't just thought about it or talked about it...i had actually done this...i had packed up and moved away, i had rented a room in a farmhouse in new hampshire, i had taken out a student loan and enrolled in a well respected and really tough graduate school...i have never bet so much on myself or invested this way in myself and my dreams...and i know i never would have without the love and wisdom i have been so blessed to live in for so much of my life. there are so many of you that have poured into me in truly remarkable ways and your giving has made this new season of my life a reality. thank you.

p.s. all the gas stations around my house a called "t birds"....

live free or die...and other state mottos that will make you wanna uproot your life and move there...

2009-08-03T15:34:00.000-07:00

so i have been accepted to grad school and i move to new hampshire in two days...which i know begs the question...what do you mean grad school....and you would think that now that i have at least phsyically rejoined the "1st world" population and with so many really big things happening to me in the almost 3 months since my return that i would have done tons of blogging and communicating, especially since i no longer have babies on my hip or lack of technological "conveniences" to hide behind as excuses...and yet....here we are...me with a whole lot of untold stories and yet another huge major life decision that i have failed to keep the interwebbytonlandville informed of and you...well i don't exactly know why you are here...i thought my mama was the only one reading this until i started getting ridiculous comments from that sadly uninformed "anonymous" and calls from the newspaper...but i am glad you are...and at any rate...i figured that this new season of life (the one where i move to a land that actually has seasons...including this one i have heard tell of but is only legend in our parts..."winter") would be a good time to try to start this whole blogging thing again...we will start with my application letter...i think it sums this move up...the questions were what are your significant learning experiences in life, what is your learning/problem solving style...and question three...why antioch, why at this time in your life, what do you hope to gain personally and professionally, and what do you hope to contribute to your field...all in 2-3 double spaced pages...right...

At 29 years old, sometimes I feel I have already lived several different lives. I have been able to experience so many different things and learn so many different lessons...about myself, about people, and about life. I have done enough of my “dream jobs” already to learn that if I keep moving forward I will get to do everything I ever dreamed about. I have helped care for three grandmothers as they died, two as they lost their physical bodies, and one as she lost her mind. I live in a different way now that I have seen what both are like. I have given my heart to someone who didn't deserve it and learned what it means to lose yourself in someone else, and to have to go looking for the pieces and put them back together. I have spent a summer working with a blind man and learned what it really means to see, learned the difference between having sight and having vision. I have met enough people who have everything to learn that “having everything” doesn't amount to much of anything. I have met enough people who don't have anything to recognize that there is “really something” to such a life. I have tried being several different people and I have learned that I am not nearly as good at being them as I am at being me.

I am a nerd. I love to make lists, to read and analyze, to look things up. But if I am going to really learn something, I have to “put my hands to it.” In my teaching, I definitely tend to show more than tell and that is also how I learn best. I usually approach a problem by breaking it down and looking at each part separately. Sometimes a situation becomes a problem merely because we are not looking at it from the right angle. Solving a problem for me is like an adventure, or a puzzle. I like to figure out how things can be rearranged so they fit together and work instead of clashing. I am very direct and I like to address issues before they grow out of proportion. I feel that healthy communication is vital to preventing and solving problems. I always explore the logic of a situation, sometimes ridiculously so, but I ultimately tend to be a go with my gut, follow my heart, trust my instincts kind of girl.

Case in point, I have been carrying around literature from Antioch New England for over a year and from the beginning I have felt so connected to this school that I have never visited and these teachers that I have never met. I can't tell you why, but some part of me knew as soon as I started looking for somewhere to study Dance Therapy that I wanted to do it at Antioch New England. “Why now?” is a very good question, especially since the deadline to apply passed last week. I have known for a long time that dance has tremendous power to heal and restore the mind and body, to offer a person the space and freedom to deal with who they are and how they feel in a way that nothing else can. I have even known for a long time that this is the area of dance I wanted to pursue. But seeing it happen... watching the wall of a child's pain begin to crumble and seeing the beauty of who they really are begin spill out on a dance floor (in this case a concrete rooftop in Haiti)...that will change everything. The first time I saw that happen I wanted, with a whole new intensity, to know everything there was to know about using the art of dance to help people. Still, when I returned home, I hesitated to go after something so big. The moving...the money...investing 2 years and my whole being to one of my many dreams...

Then a baby died.

Not my baby exactly, but a baby that I had fed on the hour through a feeding tube with a syringe, that I had Salsa danced with because a Latin beat made her smile like few things did, that I had held during days and nights of pain and fever and the general misery that comes with AIDS, a baby that I loved but could not have saved. Somehow, losing her brought back into view the vision of all the children who are waiting for healing and restoration, the children and people who could still have it, the children and people I have always wanted to help. I realized no matter how crazy it seems to go after this RIGHT NOW, now is exactly when I want to start moving toward the knowledge that matches the desire of my heart. The pains being suffered by the child soldiers and the abused women and the bearers of disease and the victims of hate are being felt NOW. So who am I to wait around any longer? Even as I type this I realize how utterly melodramatic it sounds, like something you say to get into grad school maybe, but it is actually way more honest than anything I had intended to write when I started typing. That is exactly what happened and exactly why you have this application at all.

To be completely honest, I am way more interested in the information than I am the Degree or the Certification. I plan to pursue both in excellence, but what I really want is to know how to do this, and do it well. I will bring my whole heart, all of my ideas, all of my experiences and every ounce of energy and passion I have to my studies, to my campus, to my community, and to my field.

That is the only way I know how to live.

my sister home=amazing

2009-06-16T10:28:00.000-07:00

recent conversations between us...

i thought you said i had to drive?

yeah, i did, but you veto-ed me.

since when do you listen to me?

it's this new thing im trying (eyebrow) we will see how it goes...

i need to throw up.

what..are you ok?

well, actually my heart needs to throw up. you know that feeling in your stomach when you need to throw up? my heart has that feeling.

i know exactly what you mean.

that is why i love you.

i wish we had a boat so we could smuggle your baby here.

we do have a boat.

you have really thought this through....

2009-05-29T12:07:00.000-07:00

apparently when you live in a house with 20 babies you CAN actually begin to grow eyes in the back of your head....

2009-05-27T21:52:00.000-07:00

so tonight i am up...there are a lot of reasons i could site...but its probably because there is a baby dying in our house...i am not even there...house sitting of all things...but my heart and my thoughts rest with aron...except they don't exactly rest...about a week ago the face of dying children began to narrow from a dark blurry idea to something more like an actual image...i was in the hospital where we take our children who have aids and tb waiting for an x-ray...i could sense tension among several staff that passed by and later my concerns were confirmed when they escorted two women through our hallway, both clearly weak...wailing and mourning, one calling out "petit mwen, petit mwen"...my baby my baby...now, i am the one who has been ranting for years about the state of affairs for children around the world...i know and am quick to tell people that 30 thousand children die around the world EVERY DAY because they are HUNGRY...not to mention those who are born with or develop other problems...problems that wouldn't have even been a blip on the radar for me as a baby in the states...but this wasn't 30 thousand mysterious invisible children somewhere....this was ONE baby...this was ONE mother...not mourning the global crisis we face...she mourned only one loss...a loss that filled her whole world...i was taken apart by the realization that the loss of this baby was in some ways just as big as the loss of all the ones that will have died that day...it was one baby...but i am certain the void couldn't have felt any larger if all 30 thousand mothers had been wailing in that hallway with her...we each clung to the child in our own lap...sick though they may have been they lived and breathed and felt suddenly heavier now that we were bearing the common guilt of surviors...but at some point we were each called in...got our examinations, picked up medications, had x-rays taken...bought some rice on the street...got on a tap tap...waited for our rides...everyone was different except that for each of us life kept moving while that mother laid in a chair holding her dead babies clothes...and now that reality has come home with me...once again i am facinated with how life and death, beginnings and ends, the sacred and the profane...they all lay so often side by side in our universes...we blow bubbles and dance with children then force food into a baby's sunken belly...comment on a drawing of kites and triangles while we change a diaper filled with blood...count racing heartbeats and shallow gasping respirations as wild healthy children dance and praise god with along with their favorite dvd all around us...pack a bag of food for a woman who you aren't sure can surive the walk home and then pack the bag of a baby now healthy and headed home with a smiling father...put away toys and time seizures...teach a girl with one hand to sew at the same table where you have scrubbed the burnt flesh of a nine year old with nothing but tylenol to numb her pain...cook and console and laugh and inject...cry and clean...teach and bury...somehow it is all part of the same thing...today dorothy and i stood side by side...me holding sterling and she aron...it was the weirdest moment as i looked into the eyes of a child in whom the lights seem to just be coming on and life beginning to emerge from and dorothy into eyes that seem to be drifting farther away slowly, almost carefully letting go...the reason it was weird wasn't how different their situations seems to be...it was how similar...one didn't feel like a success and the other a failure to me...both life and death are welcome to me...one is my companion for a season and the other my slave forever conquered already for eternity...and the same is true for these babies...life is a gift from god but death is merely a reuniting with him...either way they win...but its ridiculous and insulting even to pretend the loss isn't there...ive already seen it...already felt it...so who is losing, what is lost...and why...i haven't got the first clue...but maybe now i can sleep.

mine and yours....

2009-05-18T04:52:00.000-07:00

so some people came by to visit keziah before she left to go to the states for the summer and they brought us some lovely mangos...and a baby kitten....yeah. both kervens and cha cha were immediately smitten with the cat but not too surprisingly the cat favored kerven's calling of the cat and petting over cha cha's chasing and grabbing...hmm. anyway, i could feel a battle coming on over whose the cat was gonna BE...regardless of who it played with...i kept hearing each boy looking for "my cat" (or with cha cha "cat mine") but neither had heard the other so i was just waiting...to give you a little background 4 year old cha cha has moved upstairs and now shares a room with 10 year old kervens...so far cha still calls the room "room kervens" but you know how brothers can be :)...so anyway, like i said i was waiting to see just what was gonna happen with the kitty...until the other night...this is the conversation...

cha cha appears at the doorway to the kitchen after being put to bed...

cha cha, what are you doing up buddy

CAT KERVENS toilette (pooped) in MY ROOM!!

and just like that the cat became kervens'...tell me there isn't a sermon there...

p.s. the room still remains "room kervens" when it needs cleaning...tell me there isn't one there too....

2009-05-11T09:25:00.000-07:00

my day...

wake up to the sound of children saying "brush brush stop" downstairs

(to those who do not teach pre-ks how to dance that is the sound of a shuffle being practiced)

walk down the hall to hi-fives for not peeing in my bed - whoo-hoo!

(i had given hi-fives to all the kids who woke up with dry beds...they were returning the favor)

sit in the rocker with isna just whispering in her ear all the beautiful things i believe await her in life...and how precious she is to us, to her adoptive family, and to god

teach cha cha how you hold a baby cat

nap on the floor with a four month old wearing two full leg casts (to correct clubbed feet)

employ some of the child rearing skills i learned at the MP and we decide as a family that

-baseball bats are for outside

-pulling up our pants happens inside the bathroom

-and we do not put lids on containers with kitties inside them

thank you ashley...i have benefited so much from your family's journey...

spend the afternoon dressed in a sparkly top, pink scrub pants, red high heels and a paper tiara...you guessed it...playing sharpay evans for my roomate's high school musical party...fabulous

instruct kervens on how to properly wear said red high heels without breaking them, or his leg

take the gran ti moun yo outside for a little tap dancin...hokey pokey, ring around the rosey, and i see the moon....

snuggle with my ti zwazo a little before bed

remind cha cha of family decision number two...underpants up THEN exit the bathroom

bon nwit tout moun...it was a good day

blog monster returns: rise of the tail end

2009-05-06T10:03:00.000-07:00

okay...i did all i could yesterday or the day before...whenever it was that i started this monster blog to bring you up to date and i have a couple of things to say before i bring this beast to a close...

the first is that i realized after writing that first section that writing about this life that way is terribly ineffective b/c it isn't the general info about what i do in a day that deserves recording, it is those little moments that turn the world upside down, the crizazy things that one of the kids (or my mama) says at the breakfast table...it is the flashes and seconds of my day that deserve their own pages of remembering...not the boring overview...so i am sorry and i really am going to try to do better...

the second is it really annoys me that what i put into this little box never ends up looking right when i post my blog...and when i come back to this little box everything still looks right here so i don't even know how to edit it to fix it...so forgive the ridiculous annoyance of the extra spaces, misplaces pictures, and words spelled out with one letter on each line...just take comfort in knowing that instead of wasting my life figuring out this mystery i just trust you to be smart enough to get the gist and i do something worthwhile with that time...like take a nap with a baby...

now where were we...ahhh yes...back in haiti....

well i came back to a ti zwazo that weighed a whopping 14 pounds and has turned into an eating machine...we laugh a lot now about the conversations we had when we first got her and were force feeding her 10cc of formula an hour through an NG tube...we would ponder over whether it was right to force a baby in her condition to stay alive after a certain point...yeah we aren't pondering that about her anymore...she even has one of the other children stealing from other kids and putting it on her plate...and her body is now an alarm clock for the kids' meal and snack times...she will be hanging out and playing and then suddenly go into super crank muffin mode...and without fail you can check the clock and you will find it is time for food...our prayers were also answered when she went to AIDS clinic...the docs are going to put her on the ARV's without treating her first for tb (we were concerned she didn't have the time or immune system left to wait that long)...they want her to be stronger first so she still won't start for another month but it is still a good thing...so keep eating bird!

once i got back into the swing of things it was back to homeschooling now amid a group of toddlers...funny thing is i think kervens was actually way less distracted than i was...:)

i also started dancing with the kids again with the addition of roseline who is a 6 year old staying with us while she gets better from some sores and gets her nutrition back on track...it was so great because all the kids were listening better than ever and jetline has even been coming up with her own choreography...and apparently they have been teaching roseline while i was gone b/c this child who has never danced with us and doesn't speak any english knew all the steps and even what they are called...and she gets crizazy excited every time i pull out our dancebag...i have to say i was pretty proud of my little dancers!

with malnutrition you get all kinds of side effects developmentally and so we have a lot of kids who are behind in language or motor skills that we have been encouraging to catch up...johnny j...one of our aids babies...keziah's aid's baby to be more specific....is one of those...recently he finally started responding to our constant urging and on a recent trip to clinic he randomly said my name in answer to kez's question "keyes sa?" (who is that?) and then on his 2 birthday he came over to me and climbed up just like normal but then proceeded to show me that he could stand up all by himself...because we have been BEGGING this child to show any interest in walking and talking before he was 30 we showed him LOTS of positive attention for his efforts...the result has been that in various forms "casey" is the new "it word" downstairs and walking is the new cool thing to do...so at the same time we have children of several different ages and different developmental levels all learning to walk at the same time and calling "casey, casey" non stop from the basement as they try out their new skill...its really quite facinating...remember this when you pay a kid a lot of attention for something... you WILL see it again!

i got to visit healing hands for haiti for the first and second time...we got poutchino fitted for a wheelchair and took our new baby in to have her clubbed feet cast...and so keziah went to a beach retreat for three days with a youth group and got barely any sun and i spent the day in a clinic and had a sunburn when i got home...ohhhh haiti...

i made two trips to ti frer for tb clinic with poutchino and miltha and had three people offer me their chilren...

i realized that your whole perception of a luxury changes after you watch a child eat the candy coating off of an m&m and then eat the chocolate...

i had a few of those moments when you think there is something wrong with the computer screen...then you think you are about to pass out...then you realize that you have just been rocking a baby so long that you have forgotten that YOU are moving...not the images before you on the screen...but everyone has those moments, right?

i witnessed a baby leaving our house to go back to their family...my first one other than emily (who went to an orphanage) to actually be here for...it is a good thing but it was really hard to watch them walk into the ravine with her...bye bye bethsaica...

and for any of you who think i am in anyway tough or hardcore you should know i am being bullied into a daily afternoon nap by a 14lb 2 year old...so yeah.

okay, this is not nearly everything...barely anything really...but its some of the highlights and honestly...this blog has been a shadow hanging over me and i need to move on with my life...:)

so if you are still reading...consider the monster blog slain...

blog monster...or monster blog...whatever..a blog that almost scares me

2009-05-04T19:26:00.001-07:00

so in the www. i have discovered something that there is nothing quite like the thought of almost a month of life so very full of things to say and share and tell....and a blog where you haven't said or shared or told any of it....where in the world do you start...and how in the world will you convince haitian internet to load all those hotos...and who without weeks of intense training would be able to hang in for such a blog if you could in fact create it...anyway, bear with me...i am going to try to make this happen...but don't blame me if this thing gets out and eats manhattan or something....

backing up to when my family came to visit...quick re-cap...

mama came to haiti...enough said really.

laura lynn and taniuska did surgery in a clinic.

we threw a birthday party that should go down in some kind of history of parties...20 babies all dressed up in costumes with no tears, no major injuries, and no mental breakdowns...see additional blogging and photos.

mama was amazing in haiti.

we went to the basket shop and saw the inner shopper emerge in my mother...i also almost got stuck in the bathroom.

we stole the big boys from dee dee's boy's home and took them to the park to dorothy's for a movie and out for pizza...yep, domino's in haiti...as i said on facebook...sometimes the boycotts aren't as important as the boys. p.s. mama was amazing.

we walked the ravine...tata scrubbed some heads...me and laura lynn tried to help with the scribing...thank you keziah and mary.

we discovered laura lynn needs an easier name for the sake of all the children in foreign countries who are going to love her.

there was lots of hugging and loving of babies...same as usual but this time with 6 extra arms.

mama was was in haiti...and did i mention she was amazing...i love that woman. and the two other chicks she came with did pretty good too :)

okay...update on my visit to supersickytonville...turns out that the 6 days i spent on the floor in our room was care of klebsiella pneumonia...some kind of non-strep throat infection...and we discussed when i got back just how ridiculous my behavior was during that week...mesi jezi for good roomates who kept me hydrated and got me well :)

so just about the time i was starting to feel like i might could start functioning again it was time for my trip home to the states...i had felt very strongly that i was supposed to go back to GA for my brother's play at college (he was willard hewett in footloose...and was so so great) so even though it seemed kind of silly i planned my trip that way....by the time i was supposed to go there were so many reasons that i knew i was supposed to be going home at that time and i was very thankful i had trusted the leanings of my spirit...and then the day before i left i heard that some dear friends of mine had lost their 15 year old nephew/grandson/son/cousin/brother under some extra heartbreaking circumstances...even with delays and my 13 hour layover (it took me 26 hours to make two 2 hour plane rides...you figure it out) i was able to get home just in time for the funeral. what a blessing to get to put my arms around those people that day...again mesi jezi for telling me what to do back in january. i wouldn't trade anything for being able to hug those beautiful people that day...and to say goodbye to blake for now with the many many people who loved him so much - well worth an extra plane ticket.

also while i was home i got to spend some lovely time with my parents, with my dog - who is terribly fat btw, i got to put my underwear in the dryer so now i don't have to roll them up to keep them on (one of the great things about handwashing your clothes is how skinny you get to feel...more and more with each washing!)

it also turns out that bank of america is taking such good care of me and my money that they decided to take action in response to some strange spending behavior...mind you, they didn't have any trouble with all the money being spent in haiti on my card...it wasn't until i got back to the states and was spending money in the country they thought i was in all along that i suddenly couldn't use my card...ahhh the BOA...

on thursday natasha rae and i had a lovely spend the night at the farm...where we spent the night talking! nothing like going to bed at five and getting up at seven...so worth it though...i love that girl.

friday night i spent at the MP (sunny brooks market place) hostessing when i wasn't distracted by people i wanted to visit with and listening to gitlo jam with sam and the occasional customer who felt like gettin up there with him...spent some qt with beaver out by the grill and if we had had like maybe 7 more minutes i think he could have had my whole life figured out...oh well...next time :)

after we closed down we headed to the brookses to get ready for RESCUE ME...a peaceful demonstration to raise awareness about the abduction of children by the LRA in uganda and surrounding countries in africa...i have to say the perfect way to spend my weekend at home...we painted and worshipped and made shirts and plans...then saturday we headed down to tallahassee to spend the night on the steps of the capital...the event was good and so was the fellowship...even if i was kind of out of it...for some reason part of my heart and mind were still on a certain crowd of short people hanging out in the basement of this house in haiti....

so yeah, good visit...i think it was a good "practice round" for my actual going home in june...otherwise i think it would have been a million times harder when i realized how naked i feel without a baby constantly in my lap, laying on my chest, hanging on my skirt, crawling on and under and over me all the time...is that weird?

wow...moving right along aren't we...back to haiti...

after a very exhausted drive in a sticky sweet smelling rental car (apparently they don't make car air fresheners in "dogs and dance feet" variety...ahh the blaze) i made my way back to this place...back to haiti...back to the kids...back to homeschooling...back to the roof...back to the crank muffin...back to tap dancing in the back yard...back to "AGAIN" with poutchino...back to thinking of white people as foreigners...back to the roof...back to driving like you are in a video game...back to changing money in the back room at one stop...back to this life i love so much it hurts...and with that we will start again tomorrow...

so ends the monster blog part one....rrraaaaaarrrr!

reunited...

2009-04-15T22:32:00.000-07:00

so after 6 days of quarantine my little bird and i were back together again today...and just like the song says it really does feel so-o go-o-o-d....but since she is a severely malnurished baby with hiv and i was a little over 24 hours off the worst 5 days of fever i can remember...we celebrated with a nice long nap. looks like someone caught us in the act. thank you keziah for the use of your bed. and yes she peed in it. and yes you will have new sheets before you get home. and yes if you are reading this tonight i am probably sleeping in your bed on the dirty ones. but wait til you hear how many baths i have taken this week...your head might explode.

p.s. if any one out there has found a babies anonymous...i know now that i can't quit the crank muffin without some serious help...i am in way over my head here..but look at her...and she isn't even trying in this one. you should see her when she smiles...or helps pick out her own clothes....or shows me her belly to see how big it is now...or throws her tiny body upon the floor and tears at her braids at the idea of not being portayed every inch she travels...even that is cute when she does it.

my trip to super sickytonvilleland

2009-04-15T07:27:00.000-07:00

so last thursday while by beautiful ladies were still here i came down with a case of the yuck eye..it isn't painful but just a little annoying and extremely contagious which means no touching babies (i suspect laura lynn and taniuska to be somehow responsible since they then had full access to MY baby ti zwazo) and is therefore a travesty to the human condition...or at least my human condition...but the next morning cold like symptoms had set in and so i prepared to crash out once i reluctantly took my peeps to the airport and get some rest so that i would be back in full swing for the next week...between all the groups in, mine and kerv's trips out etc. the past few weeks had been a little topsy turvy and the week would be my chance to realy focus on the house, on the kids, on kervens, on dorothy...try to help get things back in to normal swing and be as helpful as possible before my trip to the states on the 18th...5 days of fever, two trips to medlab, countless hours laid out on our tile floor, too many ibproben, not near enough ice chips and water, 6 days without touching a baby, a few hallucinations and one minor meltdown later and i am finally well enough to write and say that the super productive week i planned is not exactly what went down....

...but instead of telling you all the things i didn't get to that i "needed to" or walking you through all the lovely details of my super strange illness (don't worry aunt sabra i will tell you every detail later) i thought i would tell you what happens to you at faith hope love infant rescue when you are sicker than you have ever been in your whole life...

your beautiful roomates bring you water and vitamins and ibrophen and put them in arms reach of wherever you happen to have been able to fall asleep...even if it is right in the middle of the floor and totally in their way...and even if it is their vacation

those same lovely roomates turn your entire room into a quite zone 24 hours a day...even when you are awake...

you come from a bath to find that the "big kids" have come in and made you pancakes out of their toys to help make you well...

even though it is the worst possible time for you to have gotten sick and there is so much to do that you can't help with you get to see how God works it all together for his glory and how others jump in to help and make it all work...even if you have to hear about it afterwards b/c you are too delirous to know what is going on :)

you hear children randomly call your name throughout the day let you know that they are praying for you...

medications...malaria tests...nurses to adminster them...all happen to be right there in the house which is handy...

the nannies...every time you stumble your way into the kitchen looking for some kind of relief...meds...ice...you usually run into at least 2 or 3 beautiful haitian woman who will inquire about your health in creole and at least pretend to understand what you say...they will pray for you freely right then and there...and when you have been sick for a while and you are looking pretty rough...especially in the hair area...they will look away and pretend not to notice...:)

even though your illness has made life totally boring...the beautiful boy you are supposed to be teaching won't complain...he will come and sit quietly on your bed until you fall asleep and will read to you since it hurts to hold your eyes or the book open...he even does all the voices

did i mention amazing roomates....more water...more meds...more getting of the things it seems are just so far away...the insisting that you eat and silly stuff like that...even more the offer to cook for you the stuff they are insisting you eat. the funny stories from school and boat and relationships to distract you from the huge temper tantrum your body is throwing.

even though it means she is having to do clinic and meds and deal with new babies and the trips to the base to try to get kids onto the surgery boat and a million other things without any help from you...dorothy still manages in to come in after all that as ask how YOU are doing...wow.

when it is finally too much and things just aren't getting better the beautiful dorothy and roomates will pack you into the car and haul you in to give your blood and pee and throat yuck to see what in the world is wrong with you...which means driving at night in haiti...and they will do it again the very next night if need be...and if they find out you don't have dengue fever...they will let you hold a baby on the way home.

when you finally emerge into the land of the living again children will flock to you like you have been gone a year but they will be easy on you too like somehow they know you aren't ready...they will ask to dance because they know you need to hear they want to but they won't beg because they know you really can't do it...not today...maybe tomorrow...

and ti zwazo will clap her hands and laugh. oh man.

there has been something really educational about being really sick right in the midst of this life...there is no where in this house you can go that life isn't happening...that you can't hear the laughs and cries of children, the scolds of nannies, the banging of pot and the washing of bottoms...but even when sounds and lights seem to hurt having to lay very still while it all happens around makes you understand it in a whole new way. and i hope i will value every day that i don't have a headache the way i valued the first hour i didn't have one after those days of having one...and even though i have always had probably more sympathy for a sick child than i actually needed i think listening to them while also being one has given me a different insight as to what it is to live that that...and i think i am a much better person for it....just the reminder that this very intricate, very busy, very difficult life could very well continue on with out me and it is not a necessity that i be involved here at all but something i am blessed enough to get to participate in was really good for me...there was so much...i wish i hadn't been so darn sick so i could have written all my revelations down :)...i received some of the most plain and precious and pure offerings of love from some of the deepest and most honest places in the hearts of the people here...that sounds very dramatic and over the top but it is very true and so you should know...and just so you know i don't have any dreaded fever or malaria and i am in fact going to live..so yay. i even have several pages of information about what is going on in my blood and my urine and the back of my throat ...is written in french and means virtually nothing to me but hey, im in haiti.

i love you all and if you are in southeast ga...i might see you next week...whoo hoo.

bon fet

2009-04-09T11:22:00.000-07:00

so i have some of my family here this week so and there is so much to say about that i don't know where to begin so we will leave that for now...a play by play of a ridiculous and wonderful week will be in order soon....however...something happened this week that i can't wait any longer to share...the bon fet of bon fets (read the happy birthday of happy birthdays)..three of our kids had birthdays this week including jetline...our 2nd oldest kid...so i was determined to have an extravaganza...so while we were out that day kervens and i did a little shopping...kervs bought the kids gifts and i, of course, took care of the snacks... that night we baked funfetti brownies and fancied up the dining room with some help from mama dorothy's party supply box...the plan was to bring up the big kids and the birthday kids for dress up and party time...but since two of the three birthday peeps were little ones so we decided we needed to bring at least one friend for each of them...and then we figured that frantzo and jj (our two that aren't really babies but aren't in the big kid club yet) could handle it...and that poutchino would really love it...before we knew it we had all the kids...all the nannies...and all of us in the dining room with sequins and eyepatches and hats and cowboy boots flying...needless to say it might have been one of the greatest nights of my life...and i am sure the birthday kids had an okay time too...:)

can you be addicted to a baby?

2009-03-31T09:04:00.000-07:00

so i am staying with mama kati and sam and kervens over at sherrie's school which is so great because it has been so weird to have them here in haiti but not be with me...however...i am totally missing my ti zwazo...i think i might have a problem...is there a babies anonymous? anyway, i hear she is doing okay just super cranky...her mama and keziah and i took her and johnny j and loveinsky to the aids clinic at ti frer ti ser yesterday and a bowl of cheez-its, two packs of the "green cookies", countless packs of regular bon bon, three spilled cups of water, 4 temper tantrums (all loveinsky), one pulled NG tube later we were headed home...yeah, i have decided that loveinsky can no longer be considered the epitome of love itself b/c he is not in fact patient and is in fact jealous so he is disqualified on two counts...but we are keeping the name b/c when he smiles that ridiculous smile...yeah....

our kids as a whole are doing really great...several family members have visited recently which is so great for the kids...jimson is walking like a pro now...miltha, johnny, love are close...and there is a lot more talking going on...frantzo and jj and jojo and so many others are saying names and answering questions...it is so exciting! also...poutchino is still seizure free on his new med and is pulling up and trying to walk all the time...he is so quick! not to mention how well he is eating and how great his moods are! richardson is doing great on his "get ready for school" school...he is so excited to go to school like his big sister gertie...and he is doing great with his english too...gert is gert...quite a mess but wonderful and amazing and such a little mama...she has also cut way back on the temper tantrums which is nice...that girl has a will that will change this world...what an honor to see it being molded and shaped!! oh i love these ti moun yo so so so much!

my mama and my sister and my taniuska are all coming to visit on saturday for a week and i am so beyond excited...my mama got her passport in the mail yesterday so she is all official now! holy holy! i hope haiti is ready for those crizazy wonderful women...:)

i will be in the states for a few days...april 19-27th to be more informative...which means that i also bought my plane ticket for my last month here today which was really weird...i will officially be returning to the states on june 8th...after that...all kinds of thoughts and ideas...hmmm....

wait and let me warm up your ice cream...so

2009-03-27T10:59:00.000-07:00

so today kez and i took baby miltha for a chest x-ray and then stopped by epi d'or to introduce her to the miracle of ice cream...at 9am. she was down for the sugar rush but appalled that anyone would make anything so cold...it was pretty much amazing...then we came home to witness another milestone...ti zwazo...our newest addition who is still subsisting solely on pediasure through an ng tube and her beloved cheez-its CRAWLED! we left her in the room on the floor in our efforts to not hold her ALL THE TIME and thus ruin her for life once she is healthier...she was having no part of it and when dorothy turned around there she was crawling to follow us...and mad as could be for having been left alone...of course the fact that all three of us responded to her tremendous effort by running for our cameras and smiling and laughing and clapping not picking her up RIGHT AWAY only made the tiny bird more furious...if looks could kill...that is my day so far...

2009-03-26T07:57:00.000-07:00

so the biggest story since i got home and the one that has had me so overwhelmed that doing anything...including writing about it...has been an extra challenge...on saturday after getting in from our trip to gonaives and saying bye to the team and meeting ti zwazo and seeing our kids i had missed and mama dorothy and kez and dannae and the nannies...i went to take the much needed bath...everyone was excited....when i came out i heard the car leaving (everyone hears when our car leaves) and since we rarely ever drive a dark i immediately thought something was wrong with the baby...instead i found dorothy holding her and saying that what we had been hearing rumor of and dreading had happened...the government had come into the ravine where many of our kids come from, where many of sherrie's students live, where keziah walks and treats sick children and families every week and knocked down over 300 homes...crushed them and pushed the debris into the ravine where it would be neary impossible to salvage from...kez and sam were on their way down to see what they could do...

after praying and hugging and at least laying eyes on as many families as they could...they managed to secure a warehouse as very temporary sleeping space for all the people who were now homeless and hadn't found somewhere to spend the night...not long after that...it started to rain...probably the hardest thing i have done since i have been in haiti...maybe in my whole life....was to lay my head down in a dry bed, under a solid roof, with a full belly that night....

the next day i went down with kez and sam to survey the situation in the daylight...it is so overwhelming and it is only the beginning... more sections are coming down every day...all in the supposed name of progress...the mayor claims to be planning to widen and repair roads...even if that were true...they are destroying at a much faster rate than they could ever hope to build...and displacing 1000s of the poorest people with little or no warning and no compensation after they would have just struggled to come up with a year's rent 2 months ago. the odds of finding a place and money to pay for it with are at their worst and even leaving town for the country puts them away from resources, schools and meals for their kids, medical care, jobs, missionaries...you get the idea. it is such a mess...kez was able to help some of her families, sherrie some of hers, and i drove down and helped move one of our nannies out of her home which is scheduled for demolition. but the effects of this are going to be so lasting and it overwhelms my heart...who and where and how to help ....the questions are so big and it makes me feel so small...how do i show these people that god is bigger than this...that his love for them is bigger than this...

behold the power of cheese...its

2009-03-26T07:31:00.000-07:00

so back to the cheez-its...this baby who has refused to eat and pretty much been the epitome of pitiful since i met her (barely even crying and even managing to sleep in a way that seems pitiful) and i were hanging out and i stopped by my room for a handful of crackers..this child who has done nothing but lay there reached out her hand...so i gave her a flake that probably amounted to an eighth of a cheez-it cracker knowing that she had refused to eat anything by mouth so far and expecting the same result...by the time we got to the next room she was munching away and then sat up to reach back towards my room and whimper...this was by far the most action i had seen out of this kid so i headed back that way...confused as to what could be going on...but when she saw the cheez-it box she totally went for it...so i got her a bowl of what was mostly crumbs anyway (anything in the cracker/chip family is usually mostly crumbs by the time it makes it to our store shelves) and the baby who hadn't let us put anything in her mouth and has gagged everytime we put milk in her ng tube FED HERSELF cheez-it crumbs the rest of the night! so the next 3 days went as such...she would let us do pretty much anything as long as some cheez-its were involved...the baby who never wants to be put down would even gladly lay down quietly and sleep in her own bed as long as she had a mouth full of cheez-it crumbs...cheez-its might save this baby's life...i have always been a fan but this takes it to a whole new level...keziah and i went on quite the little walking adventure to find this baby some more cheez-its and are working on a letter to the company to see if we can get them to make a nutritionally enhanced form of cheez-it...or at least give us a lifetime supply...anyway...the pictures really say it all...

before cheez-its...

and after...

ti bird

2009-03-24T18:26:00.000-07:00

so i am sitting in kerven's extra bed with a tiny little bird asleep (thank goodness) next to me....her name is rosetiana...she is 21 months old, 10 1/2 pounds, hiv postive...and not only does she have a major thing for rubbing her braids...she is apparently addicted to cheez-its...ti rose, or ti zwazo as i like to call her (little bird) came to faith hope love while i was still in gonaives with kathy and the team....i was already pretty anxious to get home to rue dalia but when i heard about her i really couldn't get here fast enough...she is so beautiful and precious but heartbreakingly sick...she just finished a 2 week stint in the hospital for malnutrition but after a week back at home she is back to where she was before the hospital...her little belly is so sunken in and she is so small and frail that it is hard to remember she is almost 2 years old...especially when you dress her in 6-9 month onesies and feed her 60cc of pediasure every hour through an ng tube...

go..going...gone...went? who invented english anyway...

2009-03-24T08:44:00.000-07:00

so after much back and forth and one sleepless night i decided that i was in fact supposed to go up to gonaives (the worst of the flooded areas from september 2008...and 2004 for that matter) with the team that came from berry college/sunny brooks marketplace....it wasn't that i didn't want to go...i just didn't want to be away from here all week...but it felt right and it was...but what a week to wait and try to blog about all at once...and it seems like old news compared to what has happened since...but we will get to that....

so on sunday after church and saying good bye to the wonderful team from new vision fellowship kervens and i headed to the airport with emory and mary and austin betz (a really great guy from wisconsin who has come to help out with the wilson's work in gonaives for the next few months) to do the hurry up and wait dance...about two bottles of water in they finally began to emerge from building into the chaos that is leaving the pap airport...no matter what you do to try to prepare and organize the process it is a lot of grapping and yelling and searching the crowd...it was so great to see those lovely familiar faces of kathy and cory and sam and kevin...and then of course the 4 new and very overwhelmed ones from berry college! after some rearranging of bags and tying everything down we piled into and onto the truck and headed for an orphanage about halfway up...it was so weird and so lovely to be sitting on top of suitcases next to kathy brooks...oh how i have missed her! but it was a little tough to catch up in the back of a truck barreling down a dusty road...a week later i still don't feel like we have really had the chance to do that...but we have gotten to do lots of other stuff so it is okay :)

we spent the night at the orphanage which meant getting to meet lot of new kids and see our precious emily marie who lives there now that she well, fat and sassy! she spent some critical time here at faith hope love and was natasha's baby...how wonderful to get to check up on her! she can even say tasha's name now! the best thing about the night for me was probably when i walked into a hallway and about 30 screaming, laughing, soaking wet, naked children came barreling at me out of a bathroom at the other end...followed by a nanny who had obviously given up on trying to keep this crowd calm amidst the arrival of a gwo machin (big truck) and lots of blancs (us)! i wish i had a picture or video...but i know i will never forget the image...it was so priceless...
in the morning we headed out again and after a few stops for haitian goodies from streetside merchan and a potty break or two we were in gonaives...a place that has rested in my mind and heart, my thoughts and prayers so very often since my last trip last june, but a place i haven't seen since the flooding caused by 4 back to back hurricances last fall. some things were stikingly the same...others completely unrecognizable...it would be a week of continuous revelations as on each outing i would see some new evidence of loss, or some new sign of life going on...

during the week the group as a whole would work on some damaged roofs, shovel some mud, visit, pray with, and treat some ill and injured members of the community and help with the daily food distribution at jubilee and raboto...one of our big jobs of the week was finding children who had been tested by an earlier group for vitamin and iron deficencies...the children who were in critical ranges needed vitamins...so we just had to find them, give them the meds, and explain to them and the crowd around why the whole bottle should be give to this one child...not all the kids in the family or the community...pa problem! it went really well though with some major help from kervens translating and some great guidance by the holy spirit...we were able to distribute almost all of the bottles and to make some great connections with the children and families of jubilee...

the feeding programs proved to be a big challenge for the group as a whole and a major place of learning and growing for us all...what a thing to do every single day...god bless the hands that have taken that on...may they be daily strengthened for the tasks before them....the big thing that i learned in that place was how much more we are saying to these children...that they get way more from us in that building every day than rice and beans...and it is really important to be concious of what i am giving the people around me with the way i live...everything communiates...what am i saying?

i also learned a lot about communal living sleeping on the roof every night...good times....

i was a beautiful and devastating time of seeing the beauty of the people of gonaives...seeing the devastation they have endured...seeing the fire and spirit with which they have endured it...there is so much to say and i know it will keep coming out as i process the whole experience...so i guess keep checking back...

one thing that was interesting and good was how ready i was to get back to my babies here in port...i missed them so much! and the night before i got home i found out we had a new baby...21 months old and 10 1/2 pounds...hiv positive...which brings me to my next story...

notification and navigation

2009-03-13T07:09:00.000-07:00

so some of you may be aware that every town i have ever moved to has started a road widening project right around my arrival on a road i had to use frequently...which usually resulted in me dealing with construction the whole time i lived there and then there being a much nicer road for me to travel on once i had moved away...people have invited me to come live with them so they could get their road paved etc...so seeing as the road system is a big issue in haiti we jokingly remarked that maybe my moving here would be how haiti got their roads fixed...

fast foward to last night...we were sitting around talking and heard some noise outside...some members of the group we have in right now helping us around the house wanted to know what it was...just the sounds of haiti...you never really know...but two of us could swear we hear spraypaint cans being shaken...this morning we found this...which is apparently how the government notifies you that they plan to widen your street...and take down your wall as well as your living room and dining room and half of your backyard to do it...in a month...

so that should be interesting...its really fun to try to explain that to the group who has just spent three days putting building stuff on the other side of that wall...good thing they are amazing wonderful people...and i am not just saying that b/c they brought popcicles...

in other, less destructive, news...yesterday i took my haiti driving to a whole new level...navigation...we had to make a trip to the hardware store (to build the shelves that might now be torn down by the mayors peeps) and will (pastor from above mentioned amazing group) really wanted to drive in haiti...so i rode shotgun and gave directions...even though i had never been there...i know that doesn't sound so amazing but you need to know a few things...i am no navigator even in the states...finding your ways along the streets of haiti is a trick with a hole in it as my daddy would say (and often in this case with literal holes!)...there are no maps...

so after having taken only one semi solo outing in haiti i took two blancs on a little adventure...we stopped at the grocery to cash a check...get a few things...and chat with the locals...i actually ran into someone i met at the sugar cane park in true "jesup we socalize at the grocery store style"...to the hardware store...translated a little creole...and then strapped some lumber to the top of the truck in true precarious teameffort style and then home again....and we made it! it was a really happy day for me...i felt like it was really finally truly HERE somehow...anyway...

i love this place...i love my life...i love you all.

funny thing about blogging...

2009-03-09T10:33:00.000-07:00

is that i usually remember to do it...or stop to do it...when there is nothing going on...when there is stuff to say i am to distracted by actually doing it to write about it....anyway....i have officially been here for a month as of saturday...sometimes it feels like it couldn't have been that long already and sometimes it feels way to familiar to not be the life i have always lived....weird...

the big news would have to be my first solo driving experience! keziah, emanuel, and i took johnny j and LOVEinsky (i officially decided this is how you should spell his name) to get them enrolled in an aids clinic...kez had to meet some people at the airport so i took her there and then went back to the hospital ALONE to pick up emanuel and the kids...it was a great success...i did make one u-turn but that was just b/c all the kids who beg at your windows distracted me from making the turn...i did know to make it! and besides, anyone who knows how i feel about u-turns knows it would have been as good a time for me if i hadn' t gotten to make one...the boys have lots of appointments coming up as they get going in the clinic so i think this will be a trip i will be doing in my sleep eventually...

i feel like we made a huge breakthrough with frantzo, the child who was affected by a stroke...in spending time with him we have discovered that he knows a lot more actual words that we thought and the appropriate uses for them...now if i can just get him to take that finger out of his mouth and use them more often and more clearly he can get what he wants without having to cry ALL THE TIME! he loves music and he can sing the e-i-e-i-o song....he will sing it forever...so i have made up motions that require both hands to go with the animals and he copies me which gets him using that left hand that we need to strengthen and improve motor function on...he loves it! his birthday is this week...he will be three...and i am really excited about the possibilities!

speaking of songs...i was rocking a little girl to sleep the other night and i was singing to her...i started singing the "hush little baby..." song and i realized that it is much easier to come up with things that rhyme to buy the baby and the what those things will do or stop doing to cause me to buy baby another thing when the child doesn't speak english...i was gonna buy her a monkey's tail...but if that monkey's tail won't swish...mama's gonna buy her some slimy fish...and if those slimy fish smell bad....mama's gonna buy her a launching pad...you get the idea...you just have to be able to sing it without laughing or she will never fall asleep....

poutchino has started a new medication and so far has been seizure free since then...he is so interested in walking and he pulls himself up and hangs on to whatever he can find to get around...that is really great news b/c it means he has an interest in being more independent and learning more...he is also vocalizing more...no new words but more sounds and sounds that seem to indicate different desires...he is so beautiful...someone who lives near me should really take him home. anyone interested?

i am really trying to learn creole...kez helps a lot and so do the nannies...and kervens....even the kids help me! i even had a creole lesson in the local store we shop at (one stop)... the cashier, manager, and even a security guard were all helping coach me on what to say - it was hilarious!

being here...being with the kids...meeting their families...walking down the street...looking at their stars...driving on their roads....waiting in these hospital waiting rooms....it all makes me see life so much differently and just see it so much...well...more...

catching up....

2009-02-27T10:24:00.000-08:00

so we have been praying for rain and the past two nights we have been blessed with lots... and just as a fleeting memory from october coming to mind about a leak issue in the infant room was coming to mind i hear nannies in the hallway...i went downstairs to find our very own indoor waterfall and about 3-4 inches of water throughout the entire basement...which is where all the kids sleep! we hauled as much bedding as we could, diapers, and babies into the living room and then kez, dannae and i went down outfitted in our headlamps for some all important recon (read to check for anything else that needed to be removed, turn off lights, and play in the water)...most of the kids were just kind of confused at being hauled around in the middle of the night and kervens slept through the whole thing! he awoke to find his schoolroom full of babies and nannies and us trying to keep kids out of...well everything...he didn't mind though since his first two tests were postponed! he was a big help cleaning up too!

other excitement around the house has been the addition of a new baby, eleazar pierre (read ZZ)...he is 15 months old and 14lbs...today after getting the kids back into their newly cleaned space we took him, kimberly, and pierreline downtown to medlab for some bloodwork and tb tests...he did great considering that on his 3rd day with us three giant white people took him to a strange place and let people poke him with needles...the fact that he isn't eternally upset is a success i think!

we had our two nannies who have been out sick return to us today...we were very happy to see ser claudia feeling better but we were so upset to find out that ser jesula had walked all this way so soon after her surgery...after letting her visit with the kids and giving her a good friendly scolding about taking care of herself and not worrying about us we drove her home...and insisted she let herself get well...that woman has such a beautiful heart...and it was good to see her...i definitely miss her spirit in the house!

poutchino's seizures have continued but he has been 2 days now without one which is good...he is also doing lots of pulling up and trying to walk which is great...you just have to keep a really good eye on him now! several of the other kids are showing some great signs of development with verbalizing and motor skills...now that so many of them are healthier we can focus on the fun stuff...like walking and talking...and dancing of course! :)

school with kervens is going great...he has handled the transition very well so far and been really patient with me as i navigate this new territory...he is such an amazing kid and i think we are both going to learn so much...and mabye even have some fun :)

homeschool mom...

2009-02-24T08:35:00.000-08:00

so kervens and i just completed our second day of homeshooling and it is going well...he and i are sorting through what works and what doesn't and we are discovering the many challenges of education where resources are limited...i have "known" that was true for some time now but becoming a teacher myself in a developing country has given me a new appreciation for all the educators throughout the world who equip students using mostly their own creativity and resourcefulness! they work is so valuable and they are to be treasured!! i would love any imput that anyone has in this area...i am sure kervs would appreciate it too!

in addition to school with kervs we are trying to bring the "big kids" upstairs at least every other day to work on motor skills, color and letter recognition and other skills that will prepare for them school since richardson will start next year and isna and clo clo won't be far behind...they are all doing really well...and they ask daily "casey i want school...and i want dance" i just have to figure out how to get them to stop asking a million times in a row!

poutchino's seizures are getting progressively worse...we had a doctor in who thought there might be a connection to his o2 levels and the seizures...thankfully a group who came back in november brought an o2 concentrator so we have been able to put it to use! we are also considering that he may need a different or additional seizure medication...i have been wanting so much to do more interaction and therapy with him but this situation makes me a little hesitant...i am trying to work with him in very short intervals so that he is getting the interaction but not getting overstimulated... please pray for this little one and for dorothy and the doctors for wisdom...being responsible for his care weighs heavy on mama dorothy...she wants to do all she can to keep him healthy...

ser ava has put lunch on the table for us so i guess that is my cue....

show love...much love!

2009-02-20T10:35:00.000-08:00

so before i even started thinking about packing god told me to bring paints to haiti...something about overcoming my hesitations about blank canvases...definitely some kind of metaphor for my life and future i think...so for my birthday people i love very much gave me paints and canvases and all the stuff in between and i came armed for creating...and yesterday kervens and i went up on the roof to do just that...turns out he had never done it either and has some of my same feelings so we tackled them together...we learned so so so much about life and this was just our first attempt...everyone should paint...

2009-02-16T21:20:00.000-08:00

so today started with a stove that didn't want to cook the children's breakfast and a big crazy goose chase for dorothy as she tried to get mickenson, his mom, and their stuff all to the hospital for his surgery...in a car with a busted radiator hose! after a lovely walk to the gas station for cornflakes and bread and two trips to the hospital and a little duct tape to make it home on a busted hose all was well...and the stove managed to fix itself by suppertime by the way...maybe the car will fix itself by morning...kez treated dorothy, kervens and i to a lunch of haitian pate and chadec (sp? its creole for grapefruit basically) from a street vendor and it was amazing...i have been hearing about pate for a while now but have not yet had the pleasure...it is like everything i love about an egg roll and then some! anyway...today i started working with frantzo again...he is a child that was affected by menengitis as an infant that resulted in seizures and a stroke. he was initially paralyzed on the left side but has regained the use of it and so i am going to be working with him on using his left hand specifically to improve control and motor coordination...anyone with ideas or experience feel free to contribute...poutchino is showing tremendous interest in standing and walking and exercising and dancing! so i am excited about doing his physical therapy as well as some motor skill work with him too...today we took gertie, clo clo, richardson, and isna out for our first tap class since i have been back and they did great...they love putting on their shoes - thank you steps of faith - and making all that glorious noise with their feet! (the girls always polish any dust off of them with the hem of their skirt before they will start) for 3 and 4 year olds with very little english they are brilliant dance students...they pick up and remember steps so well because they are so eager and excited to be dancing...of course it is a bit of a circus to watch me try to keep up with them too...like hearding one eyed cats in...well tap shoes! did i mention i love my life....?

on a different note...baby moses who has been in the hospital since he was brought here by a family who found him in a trash can malnourished and critically ill died yesterday...dorothy was running around all day after getting a call that he was in desperate shape trying to find the medication that he needed and take it to the hospital...yes...take it TO the hospital....she was able to get it to him but even with it he passed away that evening. he fought so hard and this family was fighting with him, ready to take him home and raise him as their own if he survived the ordeal...what a beautiful picture of love they were to him, and to us...

we are beginning a composting project as well as our own vegetable garden...kervens and i are so excited...anyone with tips for gardening in rocky soil in a tropical climate...bring em on please! we also start homeschooling...that is i will be homeschooling kevs (and he will probably be schoolin me a little too)...next week so please pray for us both on this new adventure...we are both excited!

show love...much love

2009-02-13T06:00:00.000-08:00

so today i am up and about after being a little sicky...nothing says welcome to haiti like a little "haitian happiness"...i am successfully eating crackers now so i think all will be well soon...we finally got mickenson's surgery scheduled after three trips to the hospital for dorothy and his mom...it is monday morning at 6am...we are going to drive them since she will have to bring all her own sheets, toilet paper, food, etc. for her and the baby...slightly different experience than in the states...keziah is headed out later today to attend a wedding and i think i am going to get a little driving experience by taking her to the airport...look out streets of haiti...i have driven some already but i still have a lot to learn and i figure the sooner the better...

the kids are doing pretty well...i did a little therapy with poutchino and he responded really well...he is walking a lot more often and definitely getting stronger...i am going to start pulling him and frantzo and a few others up separately to work on some specific things...frantzo seems to remember our work from last time and is always trying to hand me things using his weaker hand...i think he could benefit a lot from a little one on one work

we have had a few dance sessions and those have been fun...we are just experimenting to find the time of day that works the best and i am trying to learn dance terms in creole...that will help alot!

on one of the surgery scheduling attempts we also got to stop by and visit with amanda taylor and her mom janice who were down to visit with the child amanda is trying to adopt from haiti...it was a lovely visit and also very educational since we got to sit in on a meeting with the lawyer who is handling adoptions for several families out of the same orphanage. so much to figure out! blessings to all those families as they try to navigate a system that is perpetually changing!

and just like that....i'm home.

2009-02-08T06:16:00.000-08:00

dorothy and kevs told me on the ride home from the airport that my arrival would be a surprise to the kids but i could hear some commotion downstairs that sounded like maybe i had tipped them off with my loud georgia mouth...i opened the door and at the bottom of the stairs stood richardson looking like he had in fact seen an alien after telling everyone in town for years that they did exist....he started pointing and yelling..."wi, sa mama casey....mama casey isit!!!" then it went a little nuts....but in the most wonderful of ways...there was hugging and the call for "un bo" which is "a kiss" everywhere....singing and earring pulling and the question "danse? danse?" ...i love my life.

since i have been away the kids have grown up so much...jj is engaging and communicating so much more...gertie can tie shoes....levinsky is so much healthier and he is crawling around like crazy....frantzo is trying to talk....isna can sit quietly for more than 2.5 seconds...miltha's little crown of hair is turning into quite the fro...so much has happened!

i have started the getting settled in process and they had a beautiful bed made for me when i got here complete with a welcome back note...and purple and it was perfect!

to back up a little...great flight...met some interesting characters and rode on the biggest plane i have ever seen...all my luggage made it...at least everything i remembered to bring in the first place....good thing kathy is comiing soon to bring all that i forgot or couldn't fit!

two angels gave me some "me money" that was to be used for a camera but it is so hard for me to make buying decisions so quickly but with just a 20 minute window shelby and i found the perfect camera....for the exact amount that i had been given...and it was blue! yay!!! so you will be bombared with pictures...thank you aunt sabra and ginny!

i think you wanna dance with me...i think i do too!

2009-02-06T23:37:00.000-08:00

so after a morning of saying my goodbyes to the family and then running around for last minute stuff with mama kati, i had a lovely evening with some lovely ladies at the marketplace...then back home to jesup to do the final packing job with the help of my wonderful brother and ride to the airport...shelby t....i have managed to make a list of the stuff i need to do between waking up and getting on the place...now if i just make it out of the house tomorrow with the darn thing! i did find the address for sending me mail...i will put it below...

we got news this week that one of our beautiful little ones from faith hope love has gone to heaven...his name is mackenson and his precious spirit had a remarkable impact on everyone who ever looked into his eyes...he did not speak but was an amazing vessel for the truth to pour out of...and as i have said before...truths are not easily unseen...thank you for all the beautiful people who loved on him during the two years of his life...and thank you mack for teaching me the importance of hearing what is not being said...

my head and my heart are so full and this adventure doesn't even officially begin until tomorrow...well later today...what an unbelievably wonderful life i get to have...here we go...

Mailing address:

Dorothy Pearce

Agape Flights

PAP 15297

100 Airport Ave Venice, FL 34285

(I am charged $1.50 per pound for shipping on all packages)

so i have a ticket...

2009-02-05T16:40:00.000-08:00

i am leaving on saturday....flying out of jacksonville florida at 11am...wow.

whew...in a really good way.

2009-02-03T07:13:00.000-08:00

so the famine is over now and was really great...we had a really interesting experience going without food for 30 hours while hanging out IN A RESTAURANT! and ashley gets special props for doing the famine while serving in the restaurant...what a powerful experience...we got a lot done at the mp (marketplace) and we had some great times with some great people...a special thank you to those who traveled so far to be with us and to those who participated from afar too! now it is time to start planning for departure...deciding what to pack...how to pack...all the last minute tasks of closing up my life here for a little while...and then there is of course getting my actual plane ticket...might be helpful! so many people have blessed and enouraged me in so many ways this week...thank you so much for all of your love and support! i am so thankful for all the wonderful people in my life....it is really overwhelming...but in a really really good way. much love to you all!

p.s. we also raised a little bit of money for world vision too...yay! if you still have famine money get it to kathy asap so we can send it off to be used!

2009-01-27T18:46:00.000-08:00

info on the thirty hour famine...happening january 30-31

so i am moving to haiti for a few months and i would like to see as many of you as possible before i go...as my going away party we are going to host a 30 hour famine. basically it is an event created by world vision to bring awareness to and raise funds to combat the problem of world hunger and all goes with it. we will all begin fasting on friday at 12 noon on our own and then anyone who would like is invited out to the marketplace on saturday starting around 10 am for a day of activities that help us see the world a little more clearly. the fast will end at 6:00pm but conveniently enough we will be at a restaurant where i happen to know the food is great, the service is fantastic, and the atmosphere divine!

fasting is not required to participate in saturday's activities and participating is not required to fast with us. typically people fasting raise money for the cause by getting sponsored for each hour they fast (kind of like in a walk-a-thon) and there are packets available if you are interested in that. another idea could be to figure out how much you would have spent on food during the 30 hours and donate that. participating in the fundraising part is completely up to the leadings of your own hearts...

this has been a very powerful event for me in the past and one i have been wanting to share with the beautiful communities i love and am going to miss! its a heavy subject but it will be a fun and beautiful time together too. i mean, how can a whole day at sunny brooks marketplace not be good?

this is a vague schedule for the weekend...don't read to much into it though b/c i am in charge and so not only will we probably be late...we will change everything if the spirit leads!...

FRIDAY

12pm - stop eating ... only water and then juice at "mealtimes"

SATURDAY

10ish - gather together for a little info and opening type thing

11ish - assume your "famine identity"...don't worry...if you come late you will get yours then!

11:30 - game: clean water game: getting to school

12ish - juice break

12:30 - game: rebels

1ish - service project at sunny brooks marketplace

3ish - game: protect the harvest

3:30 - juice break/ help set up for evening

4ish - worship and a word from me (casey)...ok maybe more than one word

6:00 - communion with beaver

after this is over i would encourage anyone who can to stay and have dinner at the marketplace...its super fun!

side note...students from steps of faith will be performing in jesup on sunday morning so anyone who would like to come on home with me and spend the night at the farm is welcome...we will just need to make sure everyone has rides and rides home of course!

i know people are plannning to do this with us from afar and i would love to know who you are so i can include you!

come out anytime...don't worry about the time...

feel free to call or facebook or email with questions!

something in the way HE moves...

2009-01-27T13:01:00.000-08:00

so we have returned from our capitol adventure...and it was capitol! we got a personal lecture on train safety care of the conductor himself after some antics of a family member that shall remain nameless...then we had quite the party car as new friends stopped by to chat on their way in and out...breakfast with our friend samantha borders...the mlk library...the national portrait gallery....an amazing birthday lunch of indian cuizine....hoppin the metro to our actual destination, fairfax virginia and the home of the lovely willet family. sunday with the willets and all of calvary hill baptist church was great...i had a great time with the youth and kathy had a wonderful chat with the ladies of the church...kathy shared a little of her heart and what is MUCH ministries in the morning and i took my turn during the concert that night...which was fabulous by the way....and after years of threatening to tap dance whenever someone put me in front of people i actually ended my talk with a couple of time steps....in a baptist church of course! they took it upon themselves to bless me anyway and the concert was a huge success...not just musically but they raised over 3 thousand dollars to fund our work in haiti! holy holy! on monday we got to visit more art and history as well as a beautiful place called convergence: a creative community of faith...it has some of the same vision as the marketplace but is reaching out specificially to artists - really cool stuff!

the trip was really good and successful in many ways but for me the biggest thing was the moment that i realized that we had traveled 12 hours on a train to share 10 minutes of our hearts with people who either didn't know us at all or had known me for a week and none of whom had ever seen the marketplace, met the brookses, been to haiti...nothing to see how amazing what god is doing through all of this really is....on the surface it made no sense...and yet....one 17 year old girl - because she is listening to the heart of god - decided to put all this together to benefit this thing she didn't even fully understand...so there i was, and not only was it overwhelmingly fruitful financially....it was so evident that what god was doing with our presence there was so much more and was really just the beginning of what he plans to do...what amazing proof that his ways are not our ways but there is something in the way he moves...something really really great!

now that we are back home it is back into life and getting everything ready before i leave again...this time for haiti!! please pray for focus and energy and the wisdom to put my heart and mind and energy into the right things during this time.

everywhere i'm goin i ride trains...

2009-01-23T07:57:00.000-08:00

so tonight at about 6:50pm mama kati and i will board the amtrak in good old jesup ga and head for washington's union station. we are actually heading up to fairfax virginia where an amazing youth group who i love very much has put together a benefit concert to raise money for our efforts to love on children and families in the nation of haiti...can i even tell you how excited i am...this is great in so many ways...trains...the capitol...the beautiful people of CHBC...a concert...helping haiti...oh and seeing our very own samantha borders too! not only that but i will get on this train as an 84 year old woman and get off the silver meteor an 85 year old woman! whoo hoo...what an adventureous birthday!

and can i just say...this train has helped me be late to many a place during my 20 years calling jesup home...its about time it actually helped me get somewhere!

are these dots or polka dots?

2009-01-21T13:18:00.000-08:00

alex...taylor....any thoughts?