new.home.base.

here's what's been blowing my mind a little each day since august 15:

i live in Camden, New Jersey. this is a home of mine now. this is where i will sleep, eat, sing, dance, garden, teach, learn, cook, clean, speak, listen, walk, run, read the newspaper, surf the internet, drive a minivan, smile, cry, swing in the park, buy groceries, take out the trash, pray, and breathe for the next eleven months.

Camden is one of the poorest cities in the United States - for the past several years it has consistently ranked in the top 3 for crime and poverty. there are over 4000 abandoned properties scattered throughout the neighborhoods, where drugs are bought and sold like hot cakes. i live in Cramer Hill, which is in north Camden, probably one of the nicest sections, with an active community development corporation (the CHCDC) that has helped to create much safe and affordable housing, and yet just two blocks down the street from me is a row of three houses that have been sitting abandoned for about 20 years, during which multiple fires have burned out their insides, and if you just push on one of the sideboards with your pinky finger it flaps back and forth - this thing is ready to fall anytime. it's been labeled an 'imminent hazard' by the city since fall 2008, which means that it should have been demolished, at the absolute latest under LAW, by about 10 months ago. and yet it still stands. 'still stands tall', according to the Courier Post today which carried the story of the local churches' action to try to get the city to take care of this dirty business. i was there.

;-) i carried a banner and a cardboard bulldozer. you can read the story and look at pics here.

i have three housemates - one girl and two guys - who are working with the same program, Franciscan Volunteer Ministries. we like to drink tea and laugh together. i'm excited to get to know them more.

there's so much more i could say about my past 13 days of living here, and about what my day-to-day activities for this year may look like (my schedule is still kind of in process of being developed), but i mostly want to say that everyone i've met here has been wonderfully kind and welcoming. a neighbor down the street told us how he makes sure everybody puts their trash out so that it's easier for the trash man to pick it up. a lady from our church gave us an overflowing basketful of peppers and tomatoes and eggplants and canteloupe from her garden. a man at the HIV/AIDS hangout center gave us a heart-felt concert of Michael Jackson karaoke. the maintenance man at a recently-shut-down Catholic school across town lent us his truck and his own sweat and effort to help move all the textbooks, gym equipment, computers, and other useful materials to the school here, which hasn't had enough money to buy new things for years. so he helped us move it all, and then he gave us several bags of mocha cappuccino mix from the coffee company he works for. the lady who runs the HIV/AIDS ministry just brought pasta, rolls, and salad over for us for dinner, since we were working on that school job all day. our supervisor, Father John, canceled one of our meetings one day and just took us to a nature preserve on the banks of the Delaware river and we walked the trails and shore for a while.

i think it's gonna be a good journey.

momma.kolkata.says.

[she was born on August 26, 1910 in what is now Skopje, Macedonia. she always celebrated her birthday on August 27, though, because that was the day of her baptism. she died on September 5, 1997. happy birthday, Mother Teresa. and happy going-to-be-with-Jesus day, too.]

by Arabinda Aich

by Maqbool Fida Husain

Love has a hem to her garment that reaches the very dust. It sweeps the stains from the streets and lanes, and because it can, it must. - Agnesë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu, aka: Mother Teresa

by Quiccs on deviantart

[may i be a stitch in that hem, not afraid to brush the dust and be soaked in the sweat and tears of the world. and may that hem sweep inroads into me, 'come be my light'. bolomde]

lately.life.loves.mystery.

so here's how Life's been loving me lately:

- two and a half weeks in lovely Pennsylvania, visiting friends and helping out at the Holy Donut [the office building where the American Baptist International Ministries mission center is housed, which happens to be shaped like a giant Lifesaver] and learning to drive in a city again and helping out/enjoying Frazer Mennonite Church's annual Peace Festival, and hearing a friend preach and another friend teach Spanish and another friend serenade me with her glorious voice and guitar, and interviewing at Franciscan Volunteer Ministries (FVM) sites in Philadelphia, Camden, and Wilmington, and attending a peace theology conference at Eastern University, and meeting with the human resources rep of Mennonite Central Committee (MCC), and making Indian food with a friend, and enjoying freedom, and encouraging peace, and listening to jazzy ladies sing in my car on my solo road trip back to Wisconsin

- acceptance into the year-long program with FVM to be part of their inner-city ministries, living in prayerful community with a few other volunteers and working probably in some combination of teaching ESL, engaging in community organization, serving meals or distributing food to families, giving kids and youth things to do after school, and possibly starting a choir in a women's prison. insh'allah/si Dios quiere ;-)

- dialogues with a couple of other organizations about getting applications in process for possibilities after this year

- safety in bringin me back to Green Lake ;-)

- summer haircut, so light off the shoulders!

- sweet visits with friends from Taylor who stayed with me here for a week! and bittersweet goodbyes.

- grace to calm screaming toddlers who miss their mommies while i take care of them during the day at the Children's Center. "Miss Anna, um, can I go poddy? Miss Anna, can we go outside? Miss Anna, can you read me this? Miss Anna, he hit me... Miss Anna, bye, see you later!" praying peace, precious ones.

- i just found this quote while browsing the website of Christa Wells, whose Frame the Clouds album has been on repeat on my mp3 player these days:

"I want to be known (if I am to be known at all) as one of the great lovers of life. I want to make love to these days in new--or at least tender and timeless--ways, to make the trees sigh and the sky kneel for a closer view. (If a few others close their eyes and smile for a few moments with me, it is enough.) I want to dip this paintbrush pen into the best places of my heart--those places I have all but forgotten--and paint pictures that might convince even me that I was not born in vain.

We will write to go about the work of saving our lives.

Tentatively, new words come like a still small voice. This is my unspoken request. By some miracle, I ask that my life be a work of art, even if I never see it as such..." ~Linford Detweiler

- so much is still mysterious about my life, about how it intersects with other lives on this planet, about how to understand and connect with the One who is Life and Light and Love and the only true Peace for us all; there is so much i don't know. but i am willing to wait, to live in the unknown, the 'not yet'... and to keep on enjoying the journey, celebrating the adventure, and being precariously perched in the blessed mystery

it's.about.time.

time for weddings: my first classmate from high school got married Saturday, and i was almost crying along with his mother, because he was like my brother, and now he's all graduated from college and planning to work in a church for a few years and then move back to India with his beautiful WIFE, and it's all just such a mystery, how a young man would decide to lead a woman from her home, to take her on his arm and up to the altar and into his soul and all over the world. why would someone do that, take so much responsibility for another human life? that's crazy.

time for prayer meetings: on Sunday the Daudt's had all the Mu Kappa seniors over to their house, and again i was almost crying as i shared my summer plans and sketchy ideas of what i might do next year, and as people prayed for me and shared scripture that came to their minds, and then we heard everyone else's stories and situations and prayed over each of them, and it's all such a scary storm of wondering where and who and how and what we will be and do in our journeys after graduation.

time for guitar tabs: it never fails, right around the last few weeks of every semester, i always get the urge to pull out mi guitarra whenever i have a few 'free' minutes every day, and try to work up callouses on my fingertips and perfect the few little ditties i have memorized and try to add new chords or new songs to my repertoire. no matter how busy i am, regardless of how many papers and meetings and presentations i have to prepare or emails i have to send or errands i have to run, my itch to play only seems to increase as i get closer to the end. this time i decided to tackle the new skill of reading actual guitar tabs online for a few of my favorite songs by Rosie Thomas and the Weepies, because i've only ever looked at chord charts before, but that doesn't quite do it for these pieces. so now i've got a few new little licks i like to play over and over again, trying to get them just right and improvise in my own style, too.

time for cooking Indian food and baking cookies, time for planning road trips, time for breakfast dates and coffee dates, time for feeding little blue beta fish, time for singing like a big blue beluga whale with the alto section of Chorale, time for doing laundry and taking showers, time for getting to chapel on time for once...

there is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under heaven:
a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,
a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,
a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance,
a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
a time to embrace and a time to refrain,
a time to search and a time to give up,
a time to keep and a time to throw away,
a time to tear and a time to mend,
a time to be silent and a time to speak,
a time to love and a time to hate,
a time for war and a time for peace.
~ecclesiastes 3:1-8

Dona nobis pacem. O God. Grant us peace. [it's about time...Jesus, would you, please?...]

wendell.berry.sings.love.

On Earth Day: Song in a Year of Catastrophe

I began to be followed by a voice saying:
“It can’t last. It can’t last.
Harden yourself. Harden yourself.
Be ready. Be ready.”

“Go look under the leaves,”
it said, “for what is living there
is long dead in your tongue.”
And it said, “Put your hands
Into the earth. Live close
To the ground. Learn the darkness.
Gather round you all
The things that you love, name
Their names, prepare
To lose them. It will be
As if all you know were turned
Around within your body.”

And I went and put my hands
Into the ground, and they took root
And grew into a season’s harvest.
I looked behind the veil
Of the leaves, and heard voices
That I knew had been dead
In my tongue years before my birth.
I learned the dark.

And still the voice stayed with me.
Waking in the early mornings,
I could hear it, like a bird
Bemused among the leaves,
A mockingbird idly singing
In the autumn of catastrophe:

“Be ready. Be ready.
Harden yourself. Harden yourself.”

And I hear the sound
Of a great engine pounding
In the air, and a voice asking:
“Change or slavery?
Hardship or slavery?”
And voices answering:
“Slavery! Slavery!”
And I was afraid, loving
What I knew would be lost.

Then the voice following me said:
“You have not yet come close enough.
Come nearer the ground. Learn
From the woodcock in the woods
Whose feathering is a ritual
Of fallen leaves,
And from the nesting quail
Whose speckling her hard to see
In the long grass.
Study the coat of the mole.
For the farmer shall wear
The furrows and greenery
Of his fields, and bear
The long standing of the woods.”

And I asked: “You mean death then?”
“Yes,” the voice said. “Die
into what the earth requires of you.”
I let go all holds then, and sank
Like a hopeless swimmer into the earth,
And at last came fully into the ease
And the joy of that place,
All my lost ones returning.

dead.sea.mud. ;)

sparkling.wanderlied.

Wohl auf! Noch getrunken den funkelnden Wein!
Ade nun, ihr Lieben! Geschieden muss sein.
Ade nun, ihr Berge, du väterlich Haus!
Es treibt in die Ferne mich mächtig hinaus,

Die Sonne, sie bleibet am Himmel nicht steh’n,
Es treibt sie, durch Länder und Meere zu geh’n.
Die Woge nicht haftet am einsamen Strand,
Die Stürme, sie brausen mit Macht durch das Land.

Mit eilenden Wolken der Vogel dort zieht
Und singt in der Ferne ein heimatlich Lied.
So treibt es den Burschen durch Wälder und Feld,
Zu gleichen der Mutter, der wandernden Welt.

Da grüssen ihn Vögel bekannt über’m Meer,
Sie flogen von Fluren der Heimat hieher;
Da duften die Blumen vertraulich um ihn,
Sie triben vom Lande die Lüfte dahin.
Die Vögel, die kennen sein väterlich Haus,
Die Blumen, die pflanzt’ er der Liebe zum Strauss,
Und Liebe, die folgt ihm, sie geht ihm zur Hand :
So wird ihm zur Heimat das ferneste Land.


Wandering Song.

Well then, drink once more the sparkling wine!
Adieu then, my loved ones, we shall have to part.
Adieu then, you mountains, my paternal house!
A mighty force urges me to go to the distant lands.

The sun does not stand still in the sky,
It is driven over countries and seas.
The wave does not stay by the lonely shore,
The storms, they roar forcefully through the land.

With hurrying clouds the bird there flies,
And sings in the foreign land a song of homeland.
So it drives the young fellow through forest and field,
To resemble his mother, the wandering world.

There birds that he knows will greet him across sea,
They flew from the meadows of his homeland here;
There flowers surround him with intimate scent,
The breezes from the homeland wafted them here.
The birds, they know his paternal house,
The flowers he planted as a bouquet for love,
And love, it follows him, helps him along:
So he will find himself at home in the most distant land.

Well then, drink once more the sparkling wine!
Adieu then, my loved ones, we shall have to part.
Adieu then, you mountains, my paternal house!
A mighty force urges me to go to the distant lands.

one.plus.one.plus.one.equals.one.

1 + 1 + 1 = 1. yes, es la verdad. on this Chorale tour, we learned that this is true. before the wheels roll, each person checks to makes sure that one (myself) plus one (the person who stands on my right in mixed formation) plus one (the person who stands on my left in mixed formation) equals one (the whole unified Chorale).

highlights:

1. singing at the Holmstad, a retirement home in Batavia, IL, and meeting George, an outgoing old guy who grew up as an MK in Venezuela and then spent most of his life as an international airline pilot, calling Hong Kong home for a while and seeing all kinds of other places. he and i chatted for quite a while, and then i think he found almost every other MK in the Chorale and talked to them at length, too. he was so overjoyed to find young people, young MKs using their talents, and he talked about being inspired to maybe find the college MK groups in his area to advise or encourage them or just see what they're up to these days. also, after the concert i ran into my childhood doctor and his wife, who were good friends with my grandparents back in the day, and recognized my name in the program! small, small world.
+
1. singing at Fourth Presbyterian Church in Chicago, for their free noon-time concert series, where a number of homeless guys were sleeping in the pews when we walked in, and i had tears squeezing from my soul and eyes when we got to sing "on Christ the solid Rock I stand, all other ground is sinking sand," because i knew that those guys truly had nowhere else to go, nothing else to stand on or build their lives on, and i wanted so much for the words we sang to sink into their hearts and invite them to put their hope in him if they couldn't put it in the street crowd, and make their home in him if they couldn't make it in an apartment or even a shelter, and be bathed in his unchanging love if not in a hot shower, and be fed by the bread of life if not by a bagel or a burger...but i wanted to do those things for them, too. and i met T.J., bless his heart, who told it to us straight about the hard life he was living, and about how he sometimes walks the streets and freezes and cries, or comes into Fourth Pres and chills on a pew and cries out to God, praying and trusting that there's a purpose for him to be so downtrodden these days and months, maybe God's gonna raise him up, or just use him wherever he is to be a blessing, whenever someone blesses him he shares, he passes it on to his friends on the street who having a hard time, and he prays, prays and cries, cries and prays. it ripped at me to leave him there, to know there are so many more beautiful souls living just as painfully all throughout the cities of this country and the world. i am so pitifully rich; it is a pity that i don't give away more of what i have more freely to those who need it more than i do.
+
1. singing at Elmbrook church in Brookfield, WI - the home church of Brad Larson, one of the students who was killed in the Taylor van accident my freshman year. his parents invited the Chorale to come and sing, kind of as a memorial for him and a gathering of Taylor alumni. so emotional - Solid Rock was what we sang at the memorial service the year after the accident, impossible to keep dry eyes when the memories flowed back so freely and we were singing straight into the teary eyes and tender hearts of his parents. almost three years later, but how can you recover from losing a son, seriously? everything and everyone on earth we could possibly put our hope in may fail us and leave us, but "our hope is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness". and our children are not naturally supposed to get to our heavenly home before us, but if they do, we can trust in the promise that we're coming too!
=
1. one beautiful, blessed, final Chorale tour. sadness that it's over, but gladness that it happened and that the God of grace and God of glory made himself so deeply present throughout all of it, carrying our heavy burdens and preaching peace into us and revealing his dwelling place inside each person we met.

haha, i just remembered that Chorale Officer Matthew wanted to call it the 'Trinity Check', and i liked it ecstatically but then had to agree with Officer Mark that it sounded semi-blasphemous. ;-) but it is actually a pretty good expression of the mystery of the real Trinity, right? one (Father) plus one (Son) plus one (Holy Spirit) equals ONE!!!

peace, people. "shower the people you love with love"