Monday, July 16, 2012

To Love


Well after almost 24 hours of travel, 18 of which were on a plane, I have safely arrived in Chautauqua, New York where I will spend the next week hanging out and attempting to slowly adjust to being back here. 
Over the past several days as I have packed my bags, said my goodbyes, boarded planes and said hello to one of the places I call home, I have often been asked how my year was.  My generic response tends to be “I loved it” or something about loving the people, the culture or the place.
As I have constantly offered this response, I have begun to wonder a bit about what it actually means when I say that I “loved it.”  While reflecting on this, I recalled a devotion that a dear friend had offered during my time at Luther.  It was a passage from a book called Pine Island Paradox,   In the passage that was read, author Kathleen Dean Moore contemplates this same thing: what does it mean to love? 
I think that the answer she comes up with is poignant, accurate and much more articulate than I can be at this point.   Rather than try to summarize or paraphrase, I will just share Moore’s words directly with you and tell you that this is what I mean when I say I loved the people, the culture and the place.

I stretched my back and started two lists.  What does it mean to love a person?  What does it mean to love a place?  Before long, I discovered I had made two copies of the same list.   To love---a person and a place---means at least this:

One.  To want to be near it, physically
Number two.  To want to know everything about it--- its story, its mood, what it looks like by moonlight
Number three.  To rejoice in the fact of it.
Number four. To fear its loss, and grieve for its injuries. 
Five.  To protect it---fiercely, mindlessly, futilely and maybe tragically; but to be helpless to do otherwise.
Six.  To be transformed in its presence---lifted, lighter, on your feet, transparent, open to everything beautiful and new. 
Number seven.  To want to be joined with it, taken it by it, lost in it.
Number eight.  To want the best for it.
Number nine.  Desperately.

Love is an anchor line, a rope on a pulley, a taut fly line, a spruce root, a route on a map, a father teaching his daughter to tie a bowline know, eelgrass bent to the tide, and all of these---a complicated, changing web of relationships, taken together.  It’s not a choice, or a dream, or a romantic novel.  It’s a fact: an empirical fact about our biological existence.  We are born into relationships with people and places.  We are born with the ability to create new relationships and tend to them.  And we are born with a powerful longing for these relations.  That complex connectedness----nourishes and shapes us and gives us joy and purpose. 

I knew there was something important missing from my list but I was struggling to put it into words.  Loving isn’t just a state of being, it’s a way of acting in the world.  Love isn’t a sort of bliss, it’s a kind of work, sometimes hard, spirit-testing works.  To love a person is to accept the responsibility to act lovingly toward him, to make his needs my own needs.  To  love a place is to care for it, to keep it healthy, to attend to its needs as if they were my own, because they are my own.  Responsibility grows from love.  It is the natural shape of caring. 

Number ten, I wrote in my notebook.  To love a person or a place is to accept moral responsibility for its well-being.  

Sunday, July 1, 2012

Story Struggle


While yesterday was incredibly frustrating, I will continue to listen to stories, read stories, collect stories and share stories. For now, I will continue to struggle with these stories, and figure out how they work together.  I will continue to use the stories that I hear as tools for good and tools for change.  Because at the end of the day, it is our stories, combined with the stories around us, that make us who we are and give us our human-ness.”

In January, I shared the above paragraph as the conclusion of a blog that I wrote reflecting on a particularly challenging encounter we had with Jewish settlers.  In this blog, I shared how this experience had shattered my faith in the healing power of stories  and my attempts to pick up those pieces and restore something that had once been beautiful. 
 
However, the reality is that what I am calling my “story struggle” has been a defining part of my time as a YAGM.   I have always been a huge believer in the power of stories, and despite that faith being shattered, I still am.  This year I have seen the healing that comes from sharing a story, the comfort from sharing pain and the delight from sharing joy.  I have seen the desperation to share a story, the relief that comes when that story is hurt and the hope when there is a promise to continue sharing the story.   Yet, at the same time, I have also witnessed the incredible pain that can be caused when a story is distorted, hijacked or ignored.  I have seen the distress that comes when somebody is told that their story is wrong or invalid. 

I have been struggling to make sense of the stories I have heard and things I have seen all year, but now as I look to return to the States I am also struggling with how to best share these things with you all. 
I know that this is a land of multiple narratives and that what you see and hear when you come here depends your reasons for being here or the news you follow back home.  I also know that the stories and experiences, I will bring home to share will be different from much of the popular narrative, and maybe even your own experiences if you have visited Israel/Palestine. While we can agree to disagree, I ask that you don’t tell that my stories and experiences are wrong. 

I am still struggling to make sense of a lot of this, and I don’t expect you to understand it all, but I ask that you please respect my stories.  I am willing to answer any questions you may have and engage in a conversation with you.  I encourage you to push me to explain things that don’t make sense or that you want to know more about. 

However, please know that I am still struggling to figure out what I believe that I do not have all the answers.  As I continue to make sense of this year, I will be fragile and it may be challenging for me to articulate all that I need to say.  So as we discuss, I ask for your patience if I end up getting overwhelmed, emotional or simply needing to walk away. 

As I come home to share these stories, I look forward to engaging in a deeper conversation with you.  I look forward to answering any questions you may have and also to hearing your thoughts and stories. I hope that you will be willing to listen to my stories with an open mind, and I promise to do the same because I do still believe in the power of stories to change the world.