The Great Escape

I am drawn to Donald Kraybill’s concept of an upside down Kingdom, or Pema Chodron’s visual image of spiritual journeys taking us down rather than up mountains. I like the idea of becoming less. But I see one problem with that – I am a woman. And I have been raised to see my value in lessening myself. As I feel this desire to readjust my focus on power and success, I am painfully sensitive to the subtle coercion of a sexist society in this possibly-less-than-innate desire.

I have written before about how I feel torn. On the one hand, I want to nurture my professional talents and pursue political change as a social worker on a grand scale. On the other hand, I want to reconnect with the land and spend my days farming with an intentional community of friends. Why these two are at odds has been difficult to express, but having spent the summer out of school, I feel myself leaning heavily towards the latter.

Without graduate studies, I have found time to make a solar oven that, after a few adjustments, was able to cook rice and cookies (not together). I’ve started washing my clothes by plunger saving water and electricity, and building killer forearms. I garden. I cut grass with a push mower. I can peaches and salsa. I’m pretty much the coolest person there is by the standards of my social circles. Unemployed this summer (also popular amidst my social circles), I have found that these money and earth saving techniques are, in fact, a job in themselves. And I like the work. I enjoy sweating while mowing the grass, and then dipping my hands into a water bucket to wash clothes. I like my sun-slobbered skin more than freezing in an office in August. I like having dirt under my finger nails way better than paper cuts. And I feel good, saving the planet, saving money, being creative, being healthy, and reconnecting with my body and the earth.

As my friends bear children, this draw to ‘natural’ living is more intense. I still avoid child bearing like the plague, but suddenly I am drawn to the idea of being a stay at home mom, literally making a living with the every day tasks of frugality and preservation. Breast feeding – what an incredible concept! Not only are you bonding with your child, using your body to provide them with the sustenance they need, but it’s free to boot! I also enjoy the concept of cloth diapers. Use and reuse the same twenty diapers, day after day, child after child. No waste except, of course, what fills the diapers in the first place.

And yet I recognize that everything I have come to love about tending a home and raising children is a slap in the face to feminist advocates who have worked so hard to create ways to help women escape the bondage of work at home.

My resentment of authoritarian obstetricians is not new. They generate incredible lists of no-no’s for pregnant women. No cats, no caffeine, no aspirin, no alcohol, no fish, no raw milk, no fluid from hotdog packages, no bologna, no herbal teas, no pesto, no canned or prepackaged foods, no soft cheeses, no diet soda, no pineapple, no sesame seeds, and, of course, no stress. Some of us already avoid aspirin and caffeine as much as we avoid cat litter and the fluid from hotdog packages. But the underlying message that irritates me is that we suddenly acquire some value as the incubator for a child that might come out male; that every detail of our lives carries the responsibility of a child's health; that women hold the burden of blame, but very little power.

My understanding of feminism to this point has been reconnecting with the positives of femininity. Recognizing our connection to the earth in our cycles in a way that I do not think men are able. But another way to say that is 'embracing the inevitability of biology'. I am less comfortable with that definition. I felt a certain empowerment in the concept of breastfeeding, yet choosing to breastfeed would severely limit me in other roles and identities. Baby formula, disposable diapers, and tiny glass jars of mush bananas were a huge step in getting women out of the home and keeping them employed. Everything that has helped free women’s time for careers seems to run contrary to the environmental movement and earth-bound feminism I am swept up in.

I was glad to run across excerpts from Badinter’s “Le Conflit” which put words to my emotions. She says that “a movement dressed in the guise of a modern, moral cause that worships all things natural…drives independent and accomplished women out of the world and the workplace and into the house, where they will presumably squander their best, and most sexually interesting, years in unremitting slavery to their babies.” She goes on to say that, “They have been told to love those sacrifices as much as they may (or may not) love their babies, and to give themselves over to the jouissance – “orgasm” would be my translation – of intimacy with the little one who, in place of their husband or lover, will be sharing their bed for at least three years”.

So this is where I am stuck – do I aspire to the pressures of hard work at home without the pay, power, or prestige of male counterparts? Or do I aspire to the pressures of feeding a labor force and economy based on planned obsolescence? Or do I follow the path of many women and do both, stretching myself incredibly thin in dominating/submitting to both?

Excerpts

"Last night the rain was hitting the metal roof with such force and consistency that concentrating on anything was nearly impossible. I was frustrated, since a million thoughts and feelings vied for my attention. President among them, I suppose, was relief. There is certainly something different about the home; something better. Visibly, there are additional buildings and amenities, spacious dormitories and running water. What is the opposite of visible? Not invisible. Maybe spiritual. There are also spiritual changes, which were the more obvious, though harder to describe. The last two times I arrived at the home, merely pulling onto the compound brought me to tears. I felt as though something inside me was crushed simply by being there. Comparatively, I walked around yesterday feeling open and light-hearted. I know it seems ridiculous to say that within twenty four hours I have declared the home spiritually sound or acceptable. I am aware that I may have been responding more to the material than the transcendent. I'm not sure if I believe in spiritual warfare, in good and evil, in positive and negative energies. But if things can be put so simply, seven years ago the home was the latter, and is now the former. "

"Keith, of course, has made an incredible impression on the children. I envy his self-confidence. He opens himself up to people, jumps into situations, seemingly without a thought of rejection or dismissal, which I am often plagued by. He had everyone cracking up. It is hard to describe what he does! He's just himself. He draws out the goofy in everyone."

"I forgot why I was in love with Central America. Everyone's lives ripple together in aural excess; a constant shuffle of daily tasks. Food being made, clothes being washed, homes being built, and a boisterous crew carrying out the tasks. To my one side, a man plays his guitar with his eyes shut. Across the mountain you hear the steady beat of someone's radio. Mostercycles constantly gear up to make it home on the steep hills. The bus to Teguc honks its arrival. The mountains are buzzing with life."

"I notice in my culture, my faith tradition, my profession, this tendency towards polar viewing. As I said, good and evil, positive and negative, etc. You get better or you get worse. There are things you want, and things you want to avoid. So I have been approaching my experience here through this lens. "

"Yesterday the boys took us on a tour of the grounds. They pointed out all the different fruit growing near the home - mangos, bananas, pomegranates, lemons and limes, along with a few fruits foreign to us. Tracking through the mud, they showed us the chickens and goats and, when we came across it, the chicken and goat poo. A very informative experience. Today, the girls gave me a tour. We followed the same path, but this time we stopped to look at all the pretty flowers and to smile at the Mama goat and her kid. Then they spent the rest of the time showing me how to clean the mud off my shoes. First by scraping it with a piece of broken tile from the garbage pile, then by walking through the water that collects on top of the cement slab, then by scuffing through the grass until you reach the driveway. The children seem very accustomed to foreign guests, but at the same time, secure in their home. They take ownership and show pride, which we look for as a sign of health in foster homes. The children are eager to please, and often bring us gifts of colored pages torn from coloring books or distribute mangos held in the folds of their shirts. Today I was walking around holding a flower boquet of mostly leaves with little purple flowers on the top end and the roots still clinging tight to some dirt on the bottom. In my other hand I balanced three mangos."

"I love that every place on earth shares in common certain things, while at the same time, creating something completely new and unique. There is something that unites the market in Harrisburg to those in Chiang Mai and Tegucigalpa. Something common. Something human. Yet all my sences alert me to the differences as well. Studies show that the inhabitants of a given city hold in common a certain pace of life, as measured in the pace of their steps and sylables. I feel a difference but I struggle to name it. Perhaps it is this, the literal pace of life. It's a personality and a life unto itself."

"The redemption of (the children's home). Those dirty bathrooms are now the center for cleaning and the bedrooms where further molestation happened is now where things go to be mended and fixed. The home where they starved is now a huge kitchen. I think (the home) is where my faith began to topple. It is fitting that it would be the location of my faith restored."

"Nothing is hopeless. We must hope for everything"

"Sitting inside the guest house, there is a constant click, click, click of the metal roof adjusting to the change in temperature. From cool to warm, and warm to hot, and hot to hotter, and back again. While the children are at school, I enjoy sitting on the balcony looking down on the red roof of (the home). Swallowed by the green mountains of Honduras, it looks like a berry on a Christmas wreath. Birds call out their songs, more eclectic than back home. Somewhere a donkey sounds off like a train horn. I hover above it all, safe and detached. In general I feel I've moved from active participation to lofty reflection. Academia."

"(The children's home) is a very different place, but why? What made it different? Money ? is that all it takes? The new care giver? Is all anything needs is one competent person? I think most people with the competence and common sense to bring about the changes I have seen at (this children's home) have the common sense to avoid those jobs. Luckily religion tells people, particularly women, to abandon their common sense.

... And how different is it, really? The kids are politer, its clearner, there's order. Things that look really nice to me! But is it white wash?"

"The neighbors horse gave birth last night. The calf is pretty cool, but what really drew a crowd was the placenta left on the other side of the fence."

"Night and day. In the morning, I sit out on the porch and listen to the world of people. The distant mountains look little different from clouds, while the closer mountains shimmer with dancing leaves. At night, chiors of insects wake up, while the world of man and woman says its goodnight in song, amplified by some church somewhere. The music is so loud that their prayers may literally reach heaven, or at last their neighbors. I'm not sure which is their intention. Now, the closer mountains are but shadow, and the further mountains shimmer with the dancing lights of Teguc."

On the road to find out

I leave this week for Honduras. More specifically, I'm headed to a children's home.

I spent two summers at this home in undergrad. I look back on it as one of the most defining experiences of my life.

In undergrad, my worldview broadened exponentially. For the first time, I was exposed to international politics and national as well as global poverty. I devoured the words of Freire and Gutierrez. I was full of passion and optimism.

The Honduran orphanage added a healthy dose of cynicism to my otherwise idealistic understanding of a world of revolutions. I stopped romanticizing poverty after that experience.

While at the home five years ago, I wrote this:

Little hands, deep brown eyes

scarred and barred, get free!

Or are you cursed eternally?

Penetrated.

Your childhood terminated.

A lack of food has left your stomach inflated

And all we can do

is coo

"how cute".

Life: a brute.

How has it treated me so well?

My much larger hands have not known your hell.

I moan and groan in the ripples of your past

The curse it cast

Does change stand a chance?

You are David, but where is your stone?

Doubt cuts to the bone.

But giants will topple

and cycles will break.

Brown Eyes,

I can't wait to see

what your little hands make.

As you can see, I stood at a point in my life with one foot in youthful faith, believing that all ends well, and the other foot awakening to the harsh realities of this world and a growing sense of hopelessness. Several times throughout my journal I used the phrase, "All to the good". I believed that everything, in some mysterious way, worked to the glory of G-d, as well as my own personal benefit.

"Someone stole my favorite shirt while it was drying out on the line, but it's all to the good, I want to overcome material attachments anyway".

The phrase becomes more bothersome in the context of, "These children come from backgrounds of extreme abuse and abandonment to a home where violence and neglect are perpetuated realities. All to the good."

I needed that blind faith as a nineteen-year-old to face daily life at the home.

For the past two years I've been living under the rock of graduate studies, pretending to learn how to come up with creative ways to address the roots of societies ills. I changed my mantra from, "It's all to the good" to "It's all up to me and you".

But I still believe in the mystery. There's a human resiliency unaccounted for in the mathematics of sociology.

I'm not sure where I stand now.

I'm on the road to find out.

Graduation Day!

Today, I graduate with my Master's degree in social work!

I have aspired to a new level of cognitive functioning,

there's only one appropriate way to celebrate...

UFO's Abound

I awoke this morning from the static of a dozen unidentified flying objects outside my window.

Chirping and tweeting. Searching for love and, hopefully, picking tics out of my backyard.

I'm familiar with some birds.

The vultures that crash through the uppermost branches in the pine trees outside my front door are anything but inconspicuous.

I can spot a mallard.
If I weren't blogging, I'd call it a duck.
I heard one this afternoon in a water tunnel under a field, echoed not only by itself in the reverberating cavern, but by a brood of ducklings trying to keep up in the dark.

Seagulls.
Robins.
Blue things and red things.

Beyond that, these flutes of the air are a mystery to me.

To center myself, I have devised a plan to get to know these birds.

I choose a favorite call, and then look with all my might for the source. My first pick sounded, to me, like the Simpson's portrayal of an Irish leprechaun.

While tying up my peas this week, I finally spotted the culprit - a surprisingly recognizable finch:
The Cardinal.

I sense this longing among my peers to reclaim what's been lost in the last few generations.

A connection to the land.

An understanding of how things work.

A sustenance based on community.

Beauty in imperfection.

Simplicity and the work that comes with it.

An awakening to the voices around us; the birds and frogs and millionfold mysteries that make our world a living and functioning place.

A new amour propre, that values the self in relation to these things in the present. In the process.

Next on my list, a bird that switches from high, punctuated notes, to low fermatas.

I don't care to know it's name, but I hope to awaken to its presence.

It grounds me in my own.

Two loves

I had another revealing dream.

I dreamt I was lying in bed, walking my eyes over the curves of the sheets.

Then I realized...this was not my bed, but my hometown.

And I knew it intimately.

I knew it completely. Every rise and fall, every veer and surge in the land.

I loved it, because it comforted me, sustained me, and possessed me,

and I it.

As I came to see the details,

the molehills of humanity in the hollows of this hallowed ground,

I began walking the streets of my city

as though they were the halls of my high school. I knew

everyone I passed.

I felt great warmth for each of them. And I worried, with them,

over their concerns. Health, financial, familial, what have you.

But despite our daily worries, there was security in our amity

and goodwill.

We were connected, and stronger for it.

Then an idea turned everything grey,

stuck somewhere between black and white.

I put my hands in my pockets and continued to walk the streets,

a little more bent, biting my lip as I chewed over the idea

The full potential of my two loves could not be reached together.

Justice

2,977 US civilians on 9/11/2001.

100,000 Iraqi civilians since.

Bin Laden on 5/1/2011.

I believe in justice (Tzedakah), but I'm not sure I believe in justice (Mishpat).

Soldier's Poem