Fireworks

Yesterday was a marvelously relaxing day involving a sandy afternoon at the beach, burritos, a backyard barbecue, wonderful people, watching fireworks as the waves crashed in at my feet and thousands of people throwing marshmallows at one another (thanks, Ocean Beach. That is why I love you).

And I'm glad to have had a good day, as I really have mixed feelings about Holidays at this point in my life, especially the American ones. I grew up in a very patriotic family and as a child harbored grand illusions of my country as a sort of white knight in a world of evil. The God-blessed America of my youth has been shattered by travels outside of our borders and pouring through books and experiences that take me deep into the history of our interactions with the world. And I found that we are a corrupt and self-serving nation just like anybody else, sometimes more so than anybody else.

This isn't to say that America has done no good in the world, or that there are no good, kind American people. These we have in abundance, and I've been blessed to meet and work alongside so many in my life. But I suppose I do not attribute these beautiful moments of goodness and truth with the star-spangled roots of this country, instead I see them as glimpses of God's kingdom. And this is something that knows no borders.

Perhaps I'm too cynical.

Right now, I live in a neighborhood that looks nothing like the America of my youth. There are Muslim women in colorful scarves and mariachi music blasting from our neighbor's window at 8 o'clock in the morning. It's easier to find a tamale than a hamburger. I don't always feel safe here, and I never feel completely comfortable. And I like that. I like that because it reminds me that there is a bigger picture than housecarcareer2.5kidspicketfence. I want to dream bigger than suburbia, and for me the easiest way to do that is to stay out of it.

I was standing at a bus stop the other day, and next to me were an Ethiopian woman, a Mexican woman, and an old Karen (a tribe from Burma) man. The old man pointed at the bus stop sign and asked "siete? seven?" in what are likely at least his fourth and fifth languages. Another woman walked past, lugging a pull-cart of groceries and chattering on her cell phone in Russian. And I was really struck by the beauty of it.

Let me tell you a story.

A student I work with at the AjA Project was asked to tell the story of her "old country." It begins in a small Karen village, with Burmese soldiers pouring in with guns and fire, burning homes and killing indescriminently. The people fled, running up into the mountains with nothing to find safety. "And then I was born," she writes.

Her story is not entirely unique.

When we move on to "new country," the stories shift. They speak of feeling overwhelmed and shy, to be sure, but they also speak of safety and of food to eat. Of education and future dreams. And this is the America I can get behind, a place of sanctuary and hope. "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!" If this country can be about anything, if we take pride in anything, I hope it can be stories like these.

Waking up.

I feel as though I'm on the verge of something, in terms of creativity. This vague mental place where cultural expectations and my own hesitations disappear and I can just make things, like breathing. I was reminded of Salvation Mountain last night, Leonard Knight's masterpiece in the desert. These prolific folk artists- outsider art, they call it, like Howard Finster or Bill Traylor, just making/creating/building because some inner force directs them to do it. I forgot how much I loved them. Or the quiet little girl in my preschool class who sits at the back table each day and draws and draws and draws while the other children are playing with blocks or hiding under the tables.

What a dangerously beautiful world this would be if we all gave ourselves over completely to the things that made us come alive. The things God designed us to do.

Every time I'm almost there, something crashes/crushes/distracts. This round? Broken camera, broken scooter (yes, again), broken bank account, renewing my lease or not... I can't afford to stay here on my own, not sure if I can find a roommate, not sure if there's somewhere for me to go.

"Maybe it's time for you to get a real job," or so I've been advised. But I'm not ready to give up on this almost-there.

Life: Part Three.

This was, perhaps, the beginning of a complex thought process about creativity and its role in my own life. Or at least the first time I can recall expressing it aloud. But like most challenging thoughts, it was tucked back away in my mind somewhere. My thought process is abstract, rather than verbal, so I really do have to set aside time to sit quietly and think about things if I don't want to get lost in the whirlwind of life.

It's funny the things that will get my mind back on track.

I've challenged myself to average a book per week in 2009, so that by the time New Year's Eve rolls around I'll have polished off at least 52. Sometime in May, I realized I'd been reading largely fictional fluff. Beautiful, poetic fictional fluff, but still. I thought it would be good to try something a little more substantial, like history or a biography of some sort. In the biography section, my eyes immediately fell to the words "Einstein." I'd seen the same book sitting around my friends' house in the previous weeks and flipping through the pictures had realized how very little I knew about a man that revolutionized the way many people look at the world. And so Einstein and I have been bound together for 357 pages thus far, with a couple hundred more to follow.

I'm finding it to be very readable. Einstein was an entertaining man, and the author (Walter Isaacson) does a great job with both relating his life and breaking down some pretty complicated information about the workings of the universe so that someone like me can stand to read it. I'll admit, though, that some parts were a bit confusing for me as I've never taken a physics class. I've never considered myself much of a math/science person, and I've tended to avoid that realm of thought. But physics, you might say, were a very important part of Einstein's life, and I felt that I'd appreciate the book more if I had at least a basic grasp of the terminology. So I checked out a physics textbook from the library and set to work. And the interesting part is that I get it.

As I continue to read, I'm really struck by the way Einstein's curiousity and internal need to solve the questions that came his way would take overtake him as he forgot to eat and neglected his own personal life. And I have that same curious nature about me, but I never allow myself to exercise it. Why is that? There are probably a combination of factors... sometimes the usual; laziness, disinterest, fear of failure. But most often it's a desire to remain in the realm of mediocre, to go unnoticed. (Insert whining childhood-related psychological analysis here).

So I often just don't try.

I feel guilty, or convicted anyway, after acknowledging that. Whenever I have to think really about anything, I often just don't (as I mentioned before). But how different would my life look if I did pour all of my creative and mental energies into something? I feel as if I've been wasting precious God-given gifts all these years, mostly out of fear.

In the past few years I've been all over the world and experienced all sorts of new things. I'm left with a pretty intense curiousity about the bigger picture of world history and issues, global economics, development work, food sources and nutrition, all of that. Curiousity about what we buy and where it comes from, and how our purchases and policies impact the people involved in the process of creating and delivering them. These are new interests to be sure, and I suddenly have hundreds of questions that there are no immediate answers to.

I'm still interested in art and creative expression, though, and probably always will be. In the past these two worlds seemed to be so at odds with one another. Though I still have questions, I'm finally starting to see how they fit together. And it's not as immediately obvious as I originally thought... patching up websites and taking photos for the brochures of organizations that are doing the "good" work. Lately, as I've been given the opportunity to creatively interact with Acholi Beads, and just be introduced to and observe lots of small development projects and see how creativity has played into those. Through this I feel as though I'm finally at the beginning stages of finding my fit, both in terms of skills and ideology.

So maybe I've finally figured out what to do with my life, in the broad sense, though I'm not entirely certain of the next step. I do know that I have a lot more to learn about how the world works, things that are going to stretch my brain in directions that it's not used to going. And I need to quit being afraid of pouring my energy and creativity into something 100%.

I'm certain that God has placed me where I'm at for a very specific reason. It's true that I'm among the wealthy, but I'm starting to understand that generosity and stewardship extend far beyond the realms of finances... I need to recognize that I'm also nearly drowning in freedom, creativity and access to knowledge, and to start taking advantage of that. And perhaps this is where things will get complicated, which is what I tend to shy away from. For those of you that know me well, I hope you will be persistent in intruding upon my life and challenging me, and making sure that I'm challenging myself.

I think the second, independent part of my life was largely about noticing the rest of the world and learning to live with less in order to give more, of developing my own ideas regarding love and faith and how we ought to interact with the world. And though I'm sure that phase will never truly be finished, I also find myself at the beginning of part three, of figuring out how I fit into all of that.

And the Desert to the East.

A month or two ago, I had my mom's car for the weekend and planned a fabulous roadtrip out to the desert to see Salvation Mountain- I've been wanting to go since high school and for various reasons have just never made it out that way. It ended up being a bad weekend for everybody to go, and I have to admit that I was severely disappointed to see the trip that I've been hoping to take for so many years get so close and then disappear.

I didn't sleep well that Saturday night, and woke up in the wee hours of Sunday morning. I wasn't quite sure if I would go all the way to Salvation Mountain, but as I started driving I figured out that I was headed there. I've stared at the map so many times that I didn't need directions. And just before I hopped in the car to head down the road, I wrote this:

"I had decided to stay home today, to take this trip some other weekend when its brilliance could be appreciated by an audience greater than just myself. But it's 4 a.m. and I cannot sleep. Perhaps it is the voice of the desert calling me to itself. And so I go, racing toward the sun. Soon we will meet, in some as yet unknown point on the eastern horizon."

And along the way I twittered this:

"Awoke at four. Can't sleep. Fine then, I'll go for a drive, maybe race the sun toward the top of the mountains."

"Sunrise over a mountain lake. And then east toward the desert."

"And higher up, the sunrise spills rainbows across a desert valley."

"After eight years, I'm finally at Salvation Mountain, outside of Niland, CA. And it exceeds expectations."

"Climbing through some amazing wind-carved caves along the 8."

"And home."

And photographed this:


Moonset/sunrise. Lake Cuyamaca.



Sunrise part 2, overlooking the desert.


Early morning Anza Borrego.


And the desert blooms.


The long-awaited Salvation Mountain. Better than I expected. I will be back.


Painted jungle.


Inside.





8 West toward home.


Desert from above.


Boulder cave.

Life in the Gutter

I've been riding a borrowed bicycle to and from work each day, 12 or 13 miles round-trip. Before you are too impressed with my sudden interest in strenuous physical activity, I have to confess that this is really my only option right now.

I have learned several important life-lessons on my daily bike rides through the sketchy neighborhood surrounding the elementary school where I work. Perhaps the most valuable insight I've gained is that creepy middle-aged men who sit on their front porches around noon find me especially attractive when I'm wearing a helmet and covered in sweat. Who would've thought?

Anyhow, as I was riding home on Monday, I passed a gorgeous red lily lying in the gutter amid a a small stream of suburban sprinkler runoff. It looked so intact and fresh lying there that I assumed it was fake, but upon closer inspection realized it was very much alive. I'm all about picking up cool things that I find on the side of the road, but something made me leave it there. It's been there for five days now, and looks the same as it did at the beginning of the week.

As the water from several blocks of automatic sprinklers makes its way downhill each day, the flower's position in a constant river of water keeps it from drying out. Despite its unfortunate lot in life it is thriving, as well as any cut flower can. There's a beautiful metaphor in that, I'm sure, but I don't have any applicable thoughts at the moment.

Some stories, one about cupcakes.

This day started off with a mild disaster.

I was invited to speak about Acholi Beads at a Rotary Club meeting, and after an hour's bus ride there, realized that I had remembered to bring everything except the beads. How does that happen? Honestly...

Fortunately, the Rotary folk were a very gracious bunch and forgave my absentmindedness, and we made due with some photographs and the strand of beads I had around me neck. Disaster averted. Well, perhaps not averted but at least survived.

After that, I deserved a delicious pastry, and so I popped in to a little bakery on the way home and picked up one of these beautiful messes of sugary goodness;



















(image from laconchabakery.org)

I have some pretty profound things to say, I promise I do. They're welling up in my mind and need to be let out sometime.

But for now, here is the story about cupcakes.

I work at preschool. And honestly, I love it, even during those times when the kids are driving me crazy. Except at lunchtime, when quite literally half of them drop their sporks onto the floor.

The initial drop is usually accidental, somebody opening their little plastic packet with a bit too much gusto, sending napkin, straw and plastic utensil soaring through the air.

"Miss Miss Emily. I dropped my spoon."

And I roll my eyes and open a new little packet, stabbing the white plastic prongs into the plate of mystery meat with a twinge of annoyance that I just can't hide. And this is funny to them, and so it happens again and again...

"Miss Emilyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy. I dropped my spoooo-oon," a long, drawn-out whine.

"Emi. Drop my poon."

Or a tug on my sleeve from the quietest of them, then a finger pointing to the floor below.

And so we march back and forth from the cafeteria to the kitchen to restock, and I grumble about all the wasted napkins and straws, and try to convince 4-year-olds that it's okay to eat chicken nuggets with your fingers.

But one day, I'd had enough.

"If you can all go just ONE day without a single person dropping their spoons, I will bake cupcakes," I yelled.

"I didn't drop my spoon," one child notes.

"Yes, but somebody else did. It has to be a whole day where NOBODY drops their spoon."

I figured this was a pretty safe offer to make, one that I'd never have to follow through on. And as the days went on and those three-pronged cafeteria mainstays dropped steadily to the floor, I kind of forgot that I'd said such a thing in the first place. Until Wednesday.

"Miss Emily, nobody dropped their spoon today. Do we get a cake?"

"I don't think so," I said, stunned. "Let me check."
"Hey, M____, did you have to give anybody a new spoon?"
"No, not today."
"Hey, Mr. Z_____, did you have to give anybody a new spoon?"
"No."

Huh. They did it.

And so I stayed up until 11:30 tonight, baking lemon cream cupcakes. And then until midnight writing about it.

But I guess the lesson learned today is that you can never underestimate small children, especially when there is sugar involved.

a thought about a story about shoes, and some questions.

I've been thinking a lot about this lately, and I'm not sure that I have answers.

I don't need sandals. And if I'm buying something I don't need, I should at least hope my purchase is creating a positive impact on the world.

So what is that balance?

As someone who makes a living by creating and selling unnecessary luxuries (jewelry), what place do I have to say to people, "you ought to buy this?"

Is it enough that I'm thinking about environmental and social impact in the creation of these items and in the supplies that I buy, and that with the money I make I'm trying to live a life focused on the bigger picture?

There's something within me that drives me to create things, just as other people are driven to run or swim or write. Or even to breathe. I stop functioning properly if I can't create. And I believe that this is part of what it means to be made in God's image; in the beginning, He created the heavens and the earth.

But how does that drive manifest itself in my day to day life? And how should it?