Tag: Hope

It’s Not Over til the Fat Lady Sings, Oh Lord!

My once seemingly boundless months of self-imposed limbo are just about to end.  From that day in February 2011 when I impulsively clicked the “Life is calling…Where will you go?” banner on some long-forgotten job site, my life has been suspended as if sheathed in amber.  I perfectly preserved my past by not making any forward movement.  Life has been frozen in time, having been effectively iced  that unforgettable day when I was “sent home” from my job of twenty years by a newly empowered board member ensconced in the driver’s seat who disapproved of my professional style (or lack thereof, according to her.)

In retrospect, a bit of the impetus for taking the leap and actually completing the mind-numbingly detailed and protracted Peace Corps application was an acrid bitterness that was poisoning my perspective on just about everything in my world.  I was bitter about politics and the crushing disappointment of an Obama presidency that didn’t deliver on the promise of hope.  I was bitter about diligently and painstakingly constructing my own professional sand castle only to have it swept away in the tumultuous wake of fallout swirling after the former CEO’s decade of mismanagement and neglect.  I was angry about my husband being fired by a pompous, self-aggrandizing fool who couldn’t admit to making a mistake.  I was frustrated by suburban exile masking itself as upper-middle class success; I was alone in my house and most days on my street with little sense of community or even partaking in the human race.  I couldn’t find a job opening that piqued my interest; the only roles I seemed (on paper, at least) qualified to fill involved sitting in an office staring at a computer screen.  I was furious at the arrogant greedy bastards raping our economy on one hand while delivering lectures on entitlement and the meritorious class with the other. I had ten years of mortgage payments remaining on a condo that was sliding into disrepair while my daughter was graduating from Berkeley into an apparently limitless blue sky that had disappeared from my radar decades ago.  Yeah, I was bitter.

So I clicked.  And here I go.  Amazingly enough, though, just by taking the leap I have been immersed in a powerful new radiance, an continuous, serial affirmation that is the best reward for having faith in my ability to remake my world .  In urging us to take that first step to follow our dreams, Goethe reminds us that “boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.”  Every step of the way on this journey, I have been sustained and propelled by the encouragement and excitement and validation of friends, family and even strangers.  It has been as if every single person whom I encounter is there to encourage me, reassure me and celebrate the journey upon which I’m embarking.

Since the first weekend of May (just about five weeks prior to my scheduled departure date,) I have been showered with gatherings of love, laughter and cheers .  So – just so I never, ever forget even one moment of this precious time that is so quickly slipping through my fingers – let me shout out my fervent appreciation and bottomless affection for (in order of memorable event)

All the beautiful, wise and generous women who attended the Pilgrim Pines Retreat: Some of you I have grown incredibly close to over the past four years; a few of you I met for the first time.  All of you were integral to the peace and energy of that weekend in that sacred space.  (Not to mention the belly laughter in the circle on the cabin floor after 10pm….)

My serene hippie soul mate, Rhonda who finally lured me back to the stupendous northern coast and sat me down amongst those majestic redwoods and breathed life back into my gypsy yearnings.  Thank you so much for reinvigorating my inexplicable attraction to that land and resurfacing what I’ve neglected within myself for too long.

Charlaine, my mother-crone, my bridge who gifted me a weekend on a cruise ship, all expenses paid, with a generous helping of wisdom from the perspective of her years.  There is nothing in my life as clear and uncomplicated and absolutely unconditional as your love.  Everyone woman in the world should have a mother like you.

Bart, the soul-searching poet whose poignant verse gives voice to the restless longings of my heart; our three day conversation is still resonating within me.  You and I have been there for each other through so many cycles of life; we have always recognized each other’s true face.  It is so damn good to be your friend.

My savvy sister (ok, in-law) Andee who shared my last plate of sushi: You WILL NOT let me get away with one iota less than what you assure me I deserve, sweet thing.  I love you for having my back – and front and bottom and top.  No one can cut through the rapids and navigate the swirling eddies of emotional helplessness more deftly than you.  I may be older but you are sneaking up on wiser, sis.

The Canyon Acres Crew Susan and Tracy and Jill and Mo and Diana and Mike and Gina (and Gigi, inabsentia,) who took over the Fullerton Crowne Plaza and sang “The Piano Man” with gusto and downed kamikazes and tequila shots in memory of the crazy counselors we once were.  You all are a living testament to the love we poured out for abused kids and a worthy cause and a beaucolic five acres “nestled in a canyon;” we have been through thick and thin and gone to hell and back for each other.  You are my forever posse and will be there for me raising the roof and your glasses high until I die.  (And I expect to be there in cardboard cutout for every single camping trip!!!)

My stunningly beautiful grandmother, Lorraine who reminds me to breathe in every moment, to appreciate the richness of sitting in the Ritz Carlton’s lobby just to people watch, who never fails to bring me back into the powerful experience of ‘now’ through the gentle refrain: This Is A Good Moment. All my life, you have been the guardian angel of my soul.

Anne, my icon of incisive wit and poser of confounding conundrums, your relentlessly probing questions, the hours and weeks and months (is it years, now?) of sustained conversation, the virtual universe of our digital exchanges (can’t forget your declared preference, my dear!) have brought me – finally – to a place of unwavering resolution.  You have believed in my quest from the beginning; you know every twist and bump and ditch and detour of the path I’ve traveled to get here.  I couldn’t have asked for a wiser, more compassionate fellow sojourner.  A big hug to you and Edward for ALL the wonderful meals.

My spiritual guides, inspirations, and cheerleader, thank you ladies for a beautiful evening: Teri, proudly 70 mother of nine, who joined AmeriCorps at 62? 63? You continue to amaze me with your ability to hike faster than me, live so exuberantly and passionately, embrace new experiences and always find the silver lining; Sarah, for being so damn wise and adventuresome (and for already having joined a circus) at twenty-one years of age – world, watch out! Here she comes; Elizabeth, for being my original inspiration for joining the Peace Corps. In the desert of Orange County, through the example of your life, you presented me with a startling whirlwind of new options.  I wouldn’t have imagined this, without meeting you.  And Robinmarie, you are always out in front of me, leading the way.  Your flowing spirit has given solace to my stormy soul; thank you so much for your willingness to cry with me, laugh with me, and imagine new beginnings for us both.

Despite having been unemployed for 20 months now, letting go of my home and possessions and now, at last, my country, my life is crazy full of abundance. Bitterness, anger, frustration, and fury are a distant memory. I feel like one of the luckiest people in the world with the love and blessings of all of you buoying me up as I fly away.  I can never hope to convey what a beautiful gift you all are to me.

And wow,

does the road uphead look promising…

Inconvenience your imagination

As my day of departure draws near, almost every person I talk with poses some permutation of the question: Are you scared? (Nervous, anxious, worried, etc.) The first few times it was asked of me, I did stop and ponder my feelings.  Am I feeling fearful?  Perhaps the notion that I had to stop and think about it should have reinforced my impulsive desire to immediately blurt out, “No, of course not.”   Usually, being nervous or anxious or fearful or unsettled is a pervasive experience that informs one’s perception of the world, no matter that the cause of the feeling is not immediately present or active.  One doesn’t usually pause to consider one’s internal landscape when living in a war zone, even if the artillery fire is periodically silenced.  Or debate the fight or flight response that rises when the crackling of the undergrowth in a darkened forest might or might not signal a bear.  We usually feel what we feel without the interference of the parsing intellect.

But – being the liberally-educated progressive that I am – I have turned over that question enough times to have examined it thoroughly from all angles.  And I have concluded that, as usual, my first response is my best.  I am not scared. But it’s not because I am some extraordinary Indiana Jones-type adventurer, swashbuckling my way into unexplored territory with only a crumbling map coded in an exotic script to guide me.  I’m joining the Peace Corps, for heaven’s sake, an organization that has steadily expanded its global reach and supporting infrastructure since its inception in 1961 (the year I was born, by the way, a quirky coincidence that does not fail to delight me.)  In fact, I have never encountered a governmental agency more thorough, anticipatory, and communicative in the two decades I spent working at a non-profit, social service, government-contracting agency.  The Peace Corps should serve as a premier model of what government looks like when it works well, both for its constituents and its global neighbors.

Within an hour of sending my acceptance email (yes, folks, email – I didn’t have to fall back to a posted letter and suffer an interminable wait for a response,) I was deluged with information, from PDF booklets regarding safety and security, to detailed packing lists and links to discounting retailers, to an invitation to join a group Facebook account specifically created for the trainees departing for Moldova in June.  I have perused blogs written by current and past volunteers that describe some unexpected consequences of intimate encounters with locals; viewed detailed biopics of wintery living conditions and minimal household effects; absorbed unabashed confessionals regarding the starker realities of Peace Corps service; and been pleasantly surprised by the unexpected benefits of the outhouse. (Those of you interested in further reading can click here to gain access to literally thousands of postings by Peace Corps volunteers; you can sort by locations by clicking on the “Country” tab in the upper right.) I have reviewed hundreds of slide shows of the Moldovan countryside, host family homes, religious ceremonies and celebrations, community events, and volunteers downing beer in bars (reminding me of nothing so much as my Canyon Acres crew!)  An exhaustive political, geographic, and socio-political history of Moldova was provided via the Peace Corps Wiki. Honestly folks, I’m a bit embarrassed to admit that this experience has been more like preparing to move into the dorms of a liberal-arts hippie college where I will be studying the ennobling and salutary effects of cross-cultural immersion than going to serve an impoverished people in a backwater former Soviet state trying to fledge a capitalist economy.  (But then again, I’m not there yet…)

My thinking did lead me into a new appreciation for my particular background in literature, however, formed through an early propensity for reading that was passionately substantiated by a bachelor’s degree in English.  Reading is the primary tool that can be employed most anywhere (by those lucky enough to enjoy literacy) to traverse borders and barriers, to banish fear and apprehension.  The written word is a fabulous conveyance for time travel, geographic fluidity, and cultural transcendence.  The “I” of oneself melts and merges into the “I” of the writer as one accompanies her into foreign lands, samples exotic cuisines; participates in strange encounters and intimate trysts, navigates complex cultural strictures – all the while still residing in the commonality of human experience.  Reading is pleasurable because we DO share, at bottom, the same referents for evoking emotion and enlivening imagination.  We recognize each other as fellow human beings, despite differences in language, location, or lore.

Because I read, I have sobbed with grief accompanying the stoic soldier deployed into battle for the third time, shouldering his bag and turning his back on his family to walk the tarmac like a gangplank.  Here is principle: choosing a steadfast allegiance to an intangible ideal that could surely result in one’s untimely, grisly death over the comfort of home and the reassuring embrace of one’s spouse, partner, parents, children, or siblings. Because I read, my very bones have quaked in dread alongside the malnourished teenager as she gazes back upon the shore of her homeland receding on the horizon, knowing full well she will never set foot there again.  Here is bravery: abandoning all that one has known to traverse, alone, an open sea in a battered ship amongst a seething mass of human portage crammed in a stinking hold only to land on a distant continent where the language and customs and geography and people are completely foreign.  Because I read, I have known the crushing despair of those swept along a tide of war or drought or famine into refugee encampments, to remain stranded and homeless for countless years in the wastelands of arid deserts, windswept planos, or urban tenements.  Here is courage: continuing to live and breathe and raise children with grace and dignity and compassion beyond all rational hope for a better future.

Though some might think me principled, brave or courageous to have elected Peace Corps service, my experience, whatever ultimately it turns out to be, pales in comparison to so many hundreds of millions of others who have – whether by choice or circumstance – faced the unknown, the uncertain, the fearsome, the horrific, the dangerous.  What it comes down to for most people, I finally realized, is an overwhelming disinclination to willingly experience discomfort in order to expand one’s perspective or experience or knowledge.  It is the standard litany of routine amenities and accoutrements that people reference when vehemently explaining why they could NEVER do what I’m doing.  Will there be plumbing?  Television? Banks?  Restaurants? Ketchup?  (Really? You can’t do without a friggin’ condiment people???)

Perhaps that is why our military-industrial complex has been so frighteningly successful in gaining our acquiescence in waging a trillion dollar war on “terror.”  We’re so terrified of being inconvenienced.  Of having to squat instead of sit in splendor while shitting.  Of having to eat what’s grown in local soil rather than choosing from an array of out-of-season varietals and manufactured chemicals encased in plastic and cardboard. Of attuning our bodies to the rhythm and geography of the earth rather than relying on oil, electricity and GPS to propel and orient us.

I know so many young people – I was one myself – who give themselves over, utterly and completely, to the siren call of distant places.  They don their backpacks, pocket their pennies, wave so long to their hometowns and hit the open road with passion and excitement and a belief in possibility that never fails to stun me into realizing how few of us retain that sense of adventure after age thirty or so.  Somehow “convenience” takes hold of us, siphoning our options for travel into the procrustean corridors of cruise ships, Marriot hotels, Tauk Tour buses and Club Med resorts.  Other countries become “foreign,” thereby strange, unpredictable, untrustworthy, and inherently scary.  The only way to circumvent our fears is by booking a protective layer of Americana into our plans – stay where they speak English, serve sirloin, provide bath towels, have ketchup.

If we could only acknowledge to ourselves and to each other what infinitesimal percentage of the world’s population enjoy the “conveniences” we have become so absolutely accustomed to, feel so irrevocably entitled to, and unequivocally unable to do without.  At what irredeemable cost to the environment, to human dignity, to equity and sustainability?  To compassion?

I hope the Peace Corps changes me. I hope it rids me of any vestiges of fear of what’s “foreign.” I want it to revivify my belief in possibility, my willingness to experience discomfort in pursuing community and empathy and an adventure-ready life.   And the people I hope to change, in return, are not the Moldovans.  They are my fellow Americans.  The one’s who can’t imagine life without ketchup, especially.  Perhaps if we could picture living without our every whim being immediately satisfied, we could begin to imagine a world where all children are fed, no one goes without water, people don’t die of malaria, polar bears continue to populate the ice floes which continue to drift through the Arctic Ocean while redwoods spread their benevolent branches into blue skies that teem with condors and pollen and bees.

Just imagine…

The Face of God

This past weekend I was fortunate to spend time in intentional retreat with a group of thirty women, most of them in their forties, fifties, and sixties, but one as young as twenty six who fit right in with the rest of us.   It was especially bittersweet for me, knowing that I have only one month left in the States and that I will not see the majority of them for a long, long time.  I know these women through a particular church – one with a very liberal, progressive, and non-dogmatic theology – that I began attending in 2008, many years after fleeing Catholicism in disgust during early adolescence.   I don’t see all of them every week; in fact, this annual weekend retreat represents my sole contact with more than half of them.  Amazingly, we pick up right where we left off the previous year, somehow still close in heart and mind despite having spent little or no time with each other in the interim.

My issues with organized religion are familiar to a host of others, I’m sure, who have been unable to resolve the ethical and moral dissonance demonstrated constantly in the disparity between message and action of so many self-identified “Christians.”   The Jesus who is portrayed in the gospels has no similarity, for me, to the “Christ” of those who denigrate and disparage others because of their ethnicity, vulnerabilities, sexuality, gender identity, alternate stories of God, or any one of the myriad qualities that define us as radiant, unique personifications of inspired creation.

What is refreshing and altogether captivating about being with these women is that for some 48 hours I am actually living within a community that aims to substantiate the gospels’ exhortation to love wholeheartedly and without judgment.   For a brief two days, barriers to acceptance are lowered and one can dangle a toe or finger in the heady waters of unconditional love.   There are tears and confessions and expiation and deep belly laughter and an ephemeral joy that sometimes swells and lifts us to epiphany.

They are not saints, or angels, or martyrs, these women; we complain, and kvetch, and gossip, and share private jokes that could prove to be hurtful if aired.  We are human and often fail to fully embody the challenging ministry set forth by Jesus to love all others unreservedly.  But girding our weaknesses and missteps is a powerful commitment to see and hear and hold one another, to create a safe space where vulnerabilities and transgressions can be revealed and acknowledged, shared, and reframed into a basis for learning and growing.  We are able to look unblinking into each others’ eyes and sing “You are beautiful, you are whole, and you are perfect; you are a gift to this world.”  As corny as this may sound, it takes an unusual degree of trust and hopefulness do this with conviction, with no hesitancy or shame or embarrassment.

It is experiences like this that I will miss so much, and wonder how to recreate in a land where the language is not innate to me, where the cultural mores are different, where religion is embodied in unfamiliar rites and rituals that have deep historical significance for its practitioners, but no meaningful resonance for me. Yet this is one of the integral reasons I had for joining the Peace Corps: the wish to surmount fear of the other, the uncomfortable, the foreign or strange.  So much in our current post-9/11 experience emphasizes our separateness, preys upon our anxieties regarding anything foreign, and magnifies our convictions that we as Americans personify the best way of being in this world.  But if one examines the basis of these fears and anxieties and convictions, one might be surprised to discover similar mental constructs separating us from our unmet neighbors; the homeless guy at his post on the off ramp; the hoodie-shrouded youths approaching on a darkened street; the sea of unfamiliar faces at a professional convention; the intimate huddles of conversers at a cocktail party; an authority figure presiding over an important aspect of our life; or a group of foreign travelers sharing our same flight.  We project dark forces and magnificent foes into the void of the unknown, imagining, conversely, that which is familiar to be somehow more fitting or appropriate to our survival or comfort, even if sometimes it has proved just as dangerous or malevolent in its manifestations.

Both times prior to my venturing into unfamiliar countries – Ecuador and Peru, then Guatemala – I have nursed an amalgamation of irrational fears, visualizing roving bands of armed thugs predisposed to hijacking tour buses; cunning tricksters sidling through crowds to surreptitiously liberate my passport or wallet; Kafka-esque labyrinths of unexpected bureaucracy that would entrap and preclude me returning to the US; narcotized, hallucinating drivers piloting rickety taxis over precipices; or sardonic vendors who would sell me tainted food in revenge for my perceived affluence.   All of these anxieties, while traceable, perhaps, to some apocryphal story of a friend of a friend or inflammatory media depiction aimed at the consuming masses, were born of the amorphous stew that bubbles up from the hippocampus, warning us to regard anything unknown as suspect and inherently dangerous, an ingrained, primal reaction that the disciples of Jesus so elegantly surmounted by welcoming the traveler, the Gentile, the leper, the thief and the prostitute into their midst.

I am so profoundly grateful for these women, their actualization of Christian love and the buoyancy they have breathed into my spirit as I embark on my lengthy sojourn half way across the world.  I trust that their legacy of love and encouragement will help me build connections with the new women I will meet, and find familiarity and comfort in them and their husbands and children and parents and siblings and neighbors and teachers and priests.  I am learning to acknowledge, then stay my irrational fears, relinquishing them in favor of an enfolding trust that all that is human is in common with me and is synonymous with  the face of God.

Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar.For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen.

1 John 4:20

Is today the day?

“I live now on borrowed time, waiting in the anteroom for the summons that will inevitably come.  And then – I go on to the next thing, whatever it is. Luckily, one doesn’t have to bother about that.”

– Agatha Christie

For some reason I think that today may be the day.  The red (?) blue (?) packet – it keeps changing color, according to different postings I read on the Peace Corps website –will arrive in my parents’ mailbox today.  A packet of paper has been wending its way through the post office process: in a huge plastic carton leaving the Washington DC office; in a truck; a plane; a semi; in a bin waiting for sorting; into a mail pouch slung over the deliverer’s shoulder; along the suburban streets; into the black mailbox posted at the end of a cul-de-sac on the opposite side of the continent from whence it started.  This packet contains the name of the country where I will be living for the next 27 months.  It describes the environment that will circumscribe me –the national language, the mean temperature, the presence or absence of electricity and/or indoor plumbing, the availability of housing, the cost of living, and the components of the local diet.  I will learn about the non-governmental organization to which I’ve been assigned – what city it is in, if there is any other PCV assigned there, what the mission and purpose of the organization might be, how long it’s been in existence.  It is an exercise in faith and hope to deliver your life into the unknown.  And it shows how far down the rabbit hole I had fallen that ambiguity is more attractive to me than the knowns of the past decade.

It’s in the anterooms of life that one makes the acquaintance of faith and hope.  And, if kept waiting long enough, one can take the opportunity to become their friends.  Strangely, athough I am anxious and excited to get the packet and learn the details of the next 27 months, I feel like I will be happy whatever the paper inside might say.  I have allies I didn’t have before.  I have the patience that being fifty brings.  I can face and thrive in whatever circumstance lies outside the anteroom door.