I miss direction most

I remember being traumatized by images of WWII’s concentration camps in elementary school. I literally felt my innocence burning away as my face would tingle with discomfort and rage. I’ve lost that physical reaction against human cruelty and have, in some ways, grown accustomed to the existence of hunger, violence, and overt injustice. Imbalance. I wish I still felt that utter horror at the concept, but I do not. All I have is some intellectual or spiritual aversion to the current reality. Maybe that’s enough. Rather than slowly watch that flutter away as well, maybe I can choose to engage.

I have started applying for jobs again. I am restless. Maybe it’s discontentment. Is it healthy?

Children endure horrific abuse daily. I have seen the rows upon rows of filing cabinets documenting the discovered cases of abuse. I have also seen children taken from the care of their families because the definition of neglect is nearly inseparable from the definition of poverty. People in my city are hungry. I have seen the anger of people who show up to food lines and leave unsatisfied. It’s real, and it’s close, and it only seems to get worse. (Cue Music)

Sometimes I think social work holds no answers to these problems. And as a social worker, I have felt myself becoming cynical trying to create change amidst competition, manipulation, aggression and other coping mechanisms that originated in people, communities, and organizations from some line of injustice or imbalance that seems to me inescapably cyclical. Which might be why I cannot see my friend community’s desire to farm land and live relatively isolated from the world as anything but escapism. I want that. I want to walk away from the cities and the islands of rural towns and find a place to hide. I want to tend to the land and my own spirit; the things I can more easily control.

But

I feel as though, at some point, despite the hurt and rage and nonsense of humanity, you have to be willing to say, “Ok, I’ll be part of this world”. Not only because it’s an illusion to assume you are not, but also because, in engaging, I have also seen the hope. I have seen strength and trust and empowerment and self-discovery and balance. It is much like the food line: I resonate with the feeling of being fed but unsatisfied. It's a frustration to hope. But watching the slow unraveling of a very complicated knot, you sometimes witness it break open in a burst of freedom. And it is freedom for us all.

"Although the world is full of suffering,

it is also full of the overcoming of it."

-Helen Keller

If I may be dramatic...

I would like to take this time to reference pop culture, converting romantically intentioned songs into my new anthem regarding the rejection implicit in a job hunt.

The Do's and Don'ts of Deontology

To this point, my understanding of integrity has been based on a deontological understanding of ethics. A ‘by the book’ sense that right is right and wrong is wrong. Integrity, then, was holding steadfast to one solidified idea of what is right and good.

So during the interview process it came as a surprise to me that I was so willing to ‘bend’ myself to meet an agency’s social and religious expectations in order to be hired to do the work they do in our community. What had happened to my sense of integrity?

I find myself willing to abandon my former understanding of integrity to pursue, by broader means, change for families in need. What I mean by this is that there is enough Christian in me to pull that out if I am working with Christian shareholders who might give more to a good cause if persuaded that it was Christian-run. It is certainly without integrity that I would draw that out in certain circumstances. It is blatantly manipulative. But I have a new understanding of integrity, and it conveniently leaves room for manipulation of our current structure. It goes beyond the surface level of matching up what you say with what you do. If I’m being honest, a key tenet of integrity, I am more complex than Christian or non-Christian. Regarding the morality component of integrity, chopping things up to right and wrong behavior, I find myself leaning away from deontology towards (dare I say) consequentialism.

Do not mistake consequentialism for utilitarianism. I am not saying that we are aiming at the greatest good for the greatest number. I still concern myself with the individuals. I have always heard of consequentialism in terms of, “The end justifies the means”, and told how evil this notion is by example of war. But another way to look at this manner of thinking, and consequently our understanding of integrity, is that more than our actions, the consequences of our actions matter. The fall of social work seems, to me, to be in the fact that the field is comprised of do-gooders who concern themselves too heavily with right action, and not enough with right consequence. Social work cannot just be a call towards beneficence. It must also require nonmaleficence.

Am I doing harm in adapting to certain circumstances with the goal of obtaining the best resources possible for my clients? Am I doing harm in broadening my understanding of myself to include pieces that are relatable to others? My husband thinks so. And I greatly value his opinion. It makes me wonder if I, as a woman, have been raised to forgo my true identity (more than my husband or male counterparts) towards an adaptability that is meant to allow me to please everyone. Or maybe it’s the oldest child in me. What I do notice, and want to be aware of, is that through this entire process I shift back and forth between acknowledging with real honesty who I truly am, and compartmentalizing myself in a distancing strategy. Whatever my end stance on integrity, I hope to forgo the latter.

"Sincerity must be bought at a price: the humility to recognize our innumerable errors, and fidelity in tirelessly setting them right. The sincere man…is one who has the grace to know that he may be instinctively insincere, and that even his natural sincerity may become a camouflage for irresponsibility and moral cowardice; as if it were enough to recognize the truth, and do nothing about it”

Thomas Merton

Your Time Is Now

Don't let yourself down

Muse

You Pull, I'll Push

And Other Covenants With The Earth

Slowly I have been waking to the world around me. I lived before caught up in a mad current created by this drive for acceptance and success in the guise of happiness. I am learning to let go. Part of that process, the most grounding part of it for me, is reconnecting with the Earth. I feel richer knowing what healthy growing soil looks like. I feel more alive breathing in honey suckle and knowing that I am breathing in honey suckle. I feel more connected to where I am when I recognize birdcalls. I feel. I just feel more. But very trickily it slips into knowing. I know that when my tomatoes begin to rot on the bottom they need more calcium. I know that garlic helps my health if not my breath. I know that the gravitational pull of the full moon may help induce labor. It becomes haughtiness rather than holiness. Again, I find myself possessing rather than appreciating, which keeps me striving after something that is ultimately fruitless and an illusion.

My good friend was full term right around the full moon. I thought for certain, knowing a little something about nature, that the gravity would in fact induce her labor. A “You pull, I’ll push” kind of deal. I looked up at the moon, getting ready to crest, and spoke to it as a woman, expecting her to aid my friend in labor. I couldn’t believe it when I found out that bitch ignored me (the moon, not my friend). And I came to realize that I have this false sense of control by coming to know nature. I have felt that growing my own food and knowing the land around me offered some sense of security. But the whole reason humanity has spent so much effort detaching from nature is that it is completely unpredictable. I can add as much calcium to my tomatoes as I want this year, but l am not going to get them to produce. I have no idea what went wrong. And I can down garlic clove after garlic clove with tongue-burning fervor, but I might still catch a cold and not be able to see my new baby friend until it passes. The thing about nature that separates it from the concept of a God is that this world doesn’t give a shit about us. Nature is completely indifferent to our desires, even to our health and individual survival. Which is part of what makes it so grounding. It puts me in my place, so to speak. It crashes through my lofty aspirations like a wave crashes over a sand castle. And I realize that my life’s work is just sand, powerless in the swell of the ocean. Is the point to enjoy the ride? Or to try and build something any way?

On the Nature of Understanding

Say you hoped to

tame something

wild and stayed

calm and inched up

day by day. Or even

not tame it but

meet it halfway.

Things went along.

You made progress,

understanding

it would be a

lengthy process,

sensing changes

in your hair and

nails. So it’s

strange when it

attacks: you thought

you had a deal.

-Kay Ryan

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."